Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c20.87

c20.87

21. The contrast between the fertility of Malabar and the most fertile part of India was once strongly brought to my attention in a conversation with a native officer who was on detachment with me in the interior of southern Malabar, and who had come from the upper provinces of Bengal. His name was Baulday Sing, a name which I still have a pleasure in remembering. He was a very handsome man upwards of six feet high, and a brave soldier. Baulday Sing according to the character of his countrymen was describing in rather glowing colours the natural fertility of his native country, its beauty and all the happiness he enjoyed there. ‘Then Baulday, what motive induced you to leave that fine country and to relinquish all these pleasures?’ The suddenness of the question perhaps at first surprised him, but after a moment’s pause he replied, ‘I left my country to see strange and wonderful things, and that I might have the pleasure of relating them on my return.’ ‘What can you have to tell from Malabar?’ ‘I shall be able to tell,’ said Baulday with an emphasis which showed the strength of the impression on his mind, ‘that I have been in a country which yields three crops of rice in a year!’ But Baulday never returned to his country.