THEIR CHRONIC INDEBTEDNESS 8.3
greater part of the year , the most substantial part of their meals . Clumps of bamboo abound in the woods , and its shoots form , for two or three months of the year , a great resource to the poor people who live near the places where it grows .
As soon as the children belonging to the class living in a state of servitude have reached the age of eight or nine , they join the same master who employs their father , the boys looking after the cattle and the girls sweeping out the byres , collecting the dung , grinding the grain , & c .
The well-to-do cultivators always employ men of this
class ; and , in order to keep them in perpetual bondage , they lend them money either on the occasion of a marriage or for other purposes . The poor wretches find themselves , on account of their small wages , quite unable to pay back the capital thus advanced , and in many cases even the interest , which soon exceeds the original loan , and are therefore reduced to the necessity of working , with their wives and children , until the end of their days . From the
time this happens their masters look upon them as actual slaves , and refuse to grant them manumission until they have repaid both the principal and interest of the sum which they or their fathers borrowed perhaps twenty or thirty years before .
Those natives belonging to this class who are in a state of independence live by various industries . The greater number are carriers and coolies , or casual agricultural labourers in receipt of a small daily wage . The last-named
are generally paid in grain , but when they receive money their wage varies from a penny to twopence a day , according to the district . However , they only work in proportion to their wage , and , whatever the task , a good European workman would , in most cases , do as much as four natives .
But as the independent labourer is often out of work , and as the smallness of his wage or his improvidence does not allow of his putting by anything , his lot is no better , perhaps even worse , than that of his brother in slavery , and he is
often in absolute want . Most of them have nothing of their own , or at the best only a wretched hut twelve or
fifteen feet long by five or six broad , and from four to five feet high , which is full of insects and vermin and exhales