According as the slope of the ground is more or less rapid, each terraced plot consists in some places of many acres, in others of a few square yards.

We saw them in every state of cultivation; some in stubble, some being ploughed, some with rice-crops in various stages of growth.

Here were luxuriant patches of tobacco; there, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, yams, beans or Indian-corn varied the scene.

In some places the ditches were dry, in others little streams crossed our road and were distributed over lands about to be sown or planted.

The banks which bordered every terrace rose regularly in horizontal lines above each other; sometimes rounding an abrupt knoll and looking like a fortification, or sweeping around some deep hollow and forming on a gigantic scale the seats of an amphitheatre.