they raise a roar loud enough to wake the dead. The dust rises in
denser clouds, the noise is deafening, a regular mad hurry-scurry, a
wild boisterous scramble ensues, and amid much chaffing, noise, and
laughter, they scramble off again to begin another length of land; and
so the day's work goes on.

The planter has to count his coolies several times a-day, or they would
cheat him. Some come in the morning, get counted, and their names put
on the roll, and then go off till paytime comes round. Some come for an
hour or two, and send a relative in the evening when the pice are being
paid out, to get the wage of work they have not done. All are paid in
pice--little copper bits of coin, averaging about sixty-four to the
rupee. However, you soon come to know the coolies by sight, and after
some experience are rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get
'done' most thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the
artless and unsophisticated coolie.

The type of feature along a line of coolies is as a rule a very
forbidding and degraded one. They are mostly of the very poorest class.
Many of them are plainly half silly, or wholly idiotic; not a few are
deaf and dumb; others are crippled or deformed, and numbers are leprous
and scrofulous. Numbers of them are afflicted in some districts with
goitre, caused probably by bad drinking water; all have a pinched,
withered, wan look, that tells of hard work and insufficient fare. It
is a pleasure to turn to the end of the line, where the Dangur women
and boys and girls generally take their place. Here are the loudest
laughter, and the sauciest faces. The children are merry, chubby, fat
things, with well-distended stomachs and pleasant looks; a merry smile
rippling over their broad fat cheeks as they slyly glance up at you.
The women--with huge earrings in their ears, and a perfect load of