Lands in Java are classed under two general divisions; lands which are capable of being inundated directly from streams or rivers, and lands which are not so. The former are termed _sáwah_, the latter _tégal_ or _gága_. It is on the _sáwahs_ that the great rice cultivation is carried on; and these admit of a subdivision, according to the manner in which the land is irrigated. Those which can be irrigated at pleasure from adjacent springs or rivers, are considered as the proper _sáwah_; those which depend on the periodical rains for the whole or principal part of the water by which they are fertilized, are termed _sáwah tádahan_. The former are by far the most valuable, and lands of this description admit of two heavy crops annually, without regard to any particular time of the year: the fields seldom exceed forty or sixty feet in breadth, and the water is retained in them by means of a small embankment of about a foot in height. On the slopes of the mountains, where this mode of cultivation is chiefly found, these fields are carried gradually above each other in so many terraces, for the purpose of irrigation, the water admitted in the upper terrace inundating each of them in its descent. The _tégal_ lands are appropriated to the culture of less important crops, such as the mountain rice, Indian corn, &c.
The vast superiority of the _sáwah_, or wet cultivation, over that of _tégal_, or dry, is shewn in their relative produce, and may be still further illustrated by a comparison of the rents which the two descriptions of land are calculated to afford. The quantity of _tégal_ land, or land fit for maize, as compared with that of _sáwah_ land, varies in different districts. In _Chéribon_, the _tégal_ land, by the late survey, amounted only to 2,511, while the _sáwan_ exceeded 16,000. In _Tégal_ the proportions were even more widely varied, the number of _jungs_ of the former to the latter being as 891 to 11,445. In _Surabáya_ they were as 1,356 to 17,397; in _Kedú_ and _Besúki_ they were nearly equal, being respectively as 8,295 to 10,757, and as 6,369 to 7,862.
The succession of crops, next to the facility of irrigation, depends upon the quality of the soil, which in the native provinces is divided by the cultivators into three principal kinds, _tána ládu_, _tána línchad_, and _tána pásir_. The first is the best, consisting of rich vegetable mould, and a certain proportion of sand, and exists chiefly near the banks of large rivers; the second is almost pure clay, and is found in the central plains; and the third is alluvial, and covers the maritime districts. The term _pádas péréng_ is applied to the oblique tracts enriched with a fertile mould, which form the acclivities of hills, and from which the water readily disappears. _Tána ládu_ will bear a constant succession of crops. _Tána línchad_ yields only a single annual crop of rice: during the rainy season the soil constitutes a stiff mud, in which the plants find the requisite moisture and display all their luxuriance; when it is afterwards exposed to the rays of the sun, it bursts into extensive fissures, which admitting the scorching heat by which they were produced, become detrimental to every species of vegetation.