The soil is really the finest that I have seen in India; and I have seen no part of India in which so small a portion of the surface is unfit for tillage.

The moisture rises to the surface just as it is required; and a tolerable crop is got by a poor man who cannot afford to keep a plough, and merely burns down the grass and digs the surface with his spade, or pickaxe, before he sows the seed.
Generally, however, the tillage, in the portion cultivated, is very good.

The surface is ploughed and cross-ploughed from six to twenty, or even thirty, times in the season; and the harrow and roller are often applied till every clod is pulverized to dust.
The test of first-rate preparation for the seed is that a ghurra, or earthen pitcher, full of water, let fall upon the field from a man's head, shall not break.

The clods in the muteear soil are so pulverised only in the fields that are to be irrigated, or to the surface of which moisture rises from below as the weather becomes warm.

The people say that it does so rise when required in land even a good way from the forest, and that the clods are, in consequence, not necessary to retain it.