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RICE, WORK, and WEALTH They raise two crops of fine rice a year with such success that they have more than sufficient for the needs of the population, often having enough left over to sell or give away. Even agricultural experts admit that modern methods could not improve the already excellent results, due perhaps to the intense striving of the Balinese for improvement, their communal, co-operative agricultural societies, and their Burbank-like system of seed selection. The most striking element of the Balinese landscape is the ever present ricefield, the sawa, a patch of land filled with water held by dikes cut out of the red earth. Every available piece of ground to which it is humanly possible to bring water, even to mountain heights, is made use of. The receding man-made ter. races, like flights of gigantic stairs, cover the hills and spread over the slopes and plains. When they are first filled with still water they are like mosaics of mirrors that reflect the clouds. Later they are sprinkled with the dainty blades of the newly planted 6 an all-over pattern of chartreuse on a ground of brown ooze. thickens eventually into a tender yellow-green carpet which t to a rich gold ochre as the grain ripens, finally leaving only cracked mud after the harvest. The landscape is continually changing, and as the crop begins or ends, a familiar surrounding is so transformed as to become almost unrecognizable.
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