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Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan

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Title: Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan

Author: F. H. King


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIES; OR, PERMANENT AGRICULTURE IN CHINA, KOREA, AND JAPAN ***




FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIES

OR

PERMANENT AGRICULTURE IN CHINA, KOREA AND JAPAN

By

F. H. KING, D. Sc.

1911






PREFACE





By DR. L. H. BAILEY.

We have not yet gathered up the experience of mankind in the tilling
of the earth; yet the tilling of the earth is the bottom condition
of civilization. If we are to assemble all the forces and agencies
that make for the final conquest of the planet, we must assuredly
know how it is that all the peoples in all the places have met the
problem of producing their sustenance out of the soil.

We have had few great agricultural travelers and few books that
describe the real and significant rural conditions. Of natural
history travel we have had very much; and of accounts of sights and
events perhaps we have had too many. There are, to be sure, famous
books of study and travel in rural regions, and some of them, as
Arthur Young's "Travels in France," have touched social and
political history; but for the most part, authorship of agricultural
travel is yet undeveloped. The spirit of scientific inquiry must now
be taken into this field, and all earth-conquest must be compared
and the results be given to the people that work.

This was the point of view in which I read Professor King's
manuscript. It is the writing of a well-trained observer who went
forth not to find diversion or to depict scenery and common wonders,
but to study the actual conditions of life of agricultural peoples.
We in North America are wont to think that we may instruct all the
world in agriculture, because our agricultural wealth is great and
our exports to less favored peoples have been heavy; but this wealth
is great because our soil is fertile and new, and in large acreage
for every person. We have really only begun to farm well. The first
condition of farming is to maintain fertility. This condition the
oriental peoples have met, and they have solved it in their way. We
may never adopt particular methods, but we can profit vastly by
their experience. With the increase of personal wants in recent
time. the newer countries may never reach such density of population
as have Japan and China; but we must nevertheless learn the first
lesson in the conservation of natural resources, which are the
resources of the land. This is the message that Professor King
brought home from the East.

This book on agriculture should have good effect in establishing
understanding between the West and the East. If there could be such
an interchange of courtesies and inquiries on these themes as is
suggested by Professor King, as well as the interchange of athletics
and diplomacy and commerce, the common productive people on both
sides should gain much that they could use; and the results in amity
should be incalculable.

It is a misfortune that Professor King could not have lived to write
the concluding "Message of China and Japan to the World." It would
have been a careful and forceful summary of his study of eastern
conditions. At the moment when the work was going to the printer, he
was called suddenly to the endless journey and his travel here was
left incomplete. But he bequeathed us a new piece of literature, to
add to his standard writings on soils and on the applications of
physics and devices to agriculture. Whatever he touched he
illuminated.






CONTENTS





PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN

GRAVE LANDS OF CHINA

TO HONGKONG AND CANTON

UP THE SI-KIANG, WEST RIVER

EXTENT OF CANALIZATION AND SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS

SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE

THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND TEXTILE MATERIALS

TRAMPS AFIELD

THE UTILIZATION OF WASTE

IN THE SHANTUNG PROVINCE

ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE

RICE CULTURE IN THE ORIENT

SILK CULTURE

THE TEA INDUSTRY

ABOUT TIENTSIN

MANCHURIA AND KOREA

RETURN TO JAPAN






INTRODUCTION





A word of introduction is needed to place the reader at the best
view point from which to consider what is said in the following
pages regarding the agricultural practices and customs of China,
Korea and Japan. It should be borne in mind that the great factors
which today characterize, dominate and determine the agricultural
and other industrial operations of western nations were physical
impossibilities to them one hundred years ago, and until then had
been so to all people.

It should be observed, too, that the United States as yet is a
nation of but few people widely scattered over a broad virgin land
with more than twenty acres to the support of every man, woman and
child, while the people whose practices are to be considered are
toiling in fields tilled more than three thousand years and who have
scarcely more than two acres per capita,* more than one-half of
which is uncultivable mountain land.

*[Footnote: This figure was wrongly stated in the first edition as
one acre, owing to a mistake in confusing the area of cultivated
land with total area.]

Again, the great movement of cargoes of feeding stuffs and mineral
fertilizers to western Europe and to the eastern United States began
less than a century ago and has never been possible as a means of
maintaining soil fertility in China, Korea or Japan, nor can it be
continued indefinitely in either Europe or America. These
importations are for the time making tolerable the waste of plant
food materials through our modern systems of sewage disposal and
other faulty practices; but the Mongolian races have held all such
wastes, both urban and rural, and many others which we ignore,
sacred to agriculture, applying them to their fields.

We are to consider some of the practices of a virile race of some
five hundred millions of people who have an unimpaired inheritance
moving with the momentum acquired through four thousand years; a
people morally and intellectually strong, mechanically capable, who
are awakening to a utilization of all the possibilities which
science and invention during recent years have brought to western
nations; and a people who have long dearly loved peace but who can
and will fight in self defense if compelled to do so.

We had long desired to stand face to face with Chinese and Japanese
farmers; to walk through their fields and to learn by seeing some of
their methods, appliances and practices which centuries of stress
and experience have led these oldest farmers in the world to adopt.
We desired to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps
thirty or even forty centuries, for their soils to be made to
produce sufficiently for the maintenance of such dense populations
as are living now in these three countries. We have now had this
opportunity and almost every day we were instructed, surprised and
amazed at the conditions and practices which confronted us whichever
way we turned; instructed in the ways and extent to which these
nations for centuries have been and are conserving and utilizing
their natural resources, surprised at the magnitude of the returns
they are getting from their fields, and amazed at the amount of
efficient human labor cheerfully given for a daily wage of five
cents and their food, or for fifteen cents, United States currency,
without food.

The three main islands of Japan in 1907 had a population of
46,977,003 maintained on 20,000 square miles of cultivated field.
This is at the rate of more than three people to each acre, and of
2,349 to each square mile; and yet the total agricultural imports
into Japan in 1907 exceeded the agricultural exports by less than
one dollar per capita. If the cultivated land of Holland is
estimated at but one-third of her total area, the density of her
population in 1905 was, on this basis, less than one-third that of
Japan in her three main islands. At the same time Japan is feeding
69 horses and 56 cattle, nearly all laboring animals, to each square
mile of cultivated field, while we were feeding in 1900 but 30
horses and mules per same area, these being our laboring animals.

As coarse food transformers Japan was maintaining 16,500,000
domestic fowl, 825 per square mile, but only one for almost three of
her people. We were maintaining, in 1900, 250,600,000 poultry, but
only 387 per square mile of cultivated field and yet more than three
for each person. Japan's coarse food transformers in the form of
swine, goats and sheep aggregated but 13 to the square mile and
provided but one of these units for each 180 of her people while in
the United States in 1900 there were being maintained, as
transformers of grass and coarse grain into meat and milk, 95
cattle, 99 sheep and 72 swine per each square mile of improved
farms. In this reckoning each of the cattle should be counted as the
equivalent of perhaps five of the sheep and swine, for the
transforming power of the dairy cow is high. On this basis we are
maintaining at the rate of more than 646 of the Japanese units per
square mile, and more than five of these to every man, woman and
child, instead of one to every 180 of the population, as is the case
in Japan.

Correspondingly accurate statistics are not accessible for China but
in the Shantung province we talked with a farmer having 12 in his
family and who kept one donkey, one cow, both exclusively laboring
animals, and two pigs on 2.5 acres of cultivated land where he grew
wheat, millet, sweet potatoes and beans. Here is a density of
population equal to 3,072 people, 256 donkeys, 256 cattle and 512
swine per square mile. In another instance where the holding was one
and two-thirds acres the farmer had 10 in his family and was
maintaining one donkey and one pig, giving to this farm land a
maintenance capacity of 3,840 people, 384 donkeys and 384 pigs to
the square mile, or 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs to one of our
forty-acre farms which our farmers regard too small for a single
family. The average of seven Chinese holdings which we visited and
where we obtained similar data indicates a maintenance capacity for
those lands of 1,783 people, 212 cattle or donkeys and 399
swine,--1,995 consumers and 399 rough food transformers per square
mile of farm land. These statements for China represent strictly
rural populations. The rural population of the United States in 1900
was placed at the rate of 61 per square mile of improved farm land
and there were 30 horses and mules. In Japan the rural population
had a density in 1907 of 1,922 per square mile, and of horses and
cattle together 125.

The population of the large island of Chungming in the mouth of the
Yangtse river, having an area of 270 square miles, possessed,
according to the official census of 1902, a density of 3,700 per
square mile and yet there was but one large city on the island,
hence the population is largely rural.

It could not be other than a matter of the highest industrial,
educational and social importance to all nations if there might be
brought to them a full and accurate account of all those conditions
which have made it possible for such dense populations to be
maintained so largely upon the products of Chinese, Korean and
Japanese soils. Many of the steps, phases and practices through
which this evolution has passed are irrevocably buried in the past
but such remarkable maintenance efficiency attained centuries ago
and projected into the present with little apparent decadence merits
the most profound study and the time is fully ripe when it should be
made. Living as we are in the morning of a century of transition
from isolated to cosmopolitan national life when profound
readjustments, industrial, educational and social, must result, such
an investigation cannot be made too soon. It is high time for each
nation to study the others and by mutual agreement and co-operative
effort, the results of such studies should become available to all
concerned, made so in the spirit that each should become coordinate
and mutually helpful component factors in the world's progress.

One very appropriate and immensely helpful means for attacking this
problem, and which should prove mutually helpful to citizen and
state, would be for the higher educational institutions of all
nations, instead of exchanging courtesies through their baseball
teams, to send select bodies of their best students under competent
leadership and by international agreement, both east and west,
organizing therefrom investigating bodies each containing components
of the eastern and western civilization and whose purpose it should
be to study specifically set problems. Such a movement well
conceived and directed, manned by the most capable young men, should
create an international acquaintance and spread broadcast a body of
important knowledge which would develop as the young men mature and
contribute immensely toward world peace and world progress. If some
broad plan of international effort such as is here suggested were
organized the expense of maintenance might well be met by diverting
so much as is needful from the large sums set aside for the
expansion of navies for such steps as these, taken in the interests
of world uplift and world peace, could not fail to be more
efficacious and less expensive than increase in fighting equipment.
It would cultivate the spirit of pulling together and of a square
deal rather than one of holding aloof and of striving to gain
unneighborly advantage.

Many factors and conditions conspire to give to the farms and
farmers of the Far East their high maintenance efficiency and some
of these may be succinctly stated. The portions of China, Korea and
Japan where dense populations have developed and are being
maintained occupy exceptionally favorable geographic positions so
far as these influence agricultural production. Canton in the south
of China has the latitude of Havana, Cuba, while Mukden in
Manchuria, and northern Honshu in Japan are only as far north as New
York city, Chicago and northern California. The United States lies
mainly between 50 degrees and 30 degrees of latitude while these
three countries lie between 40 degrees and 20 degrees, some seven
hundred miles further south. This difference of position, giving
them longer seasons, has made it possible for them to devise systems
of agriculture whereby they grow two, three and even four crops on
the same piece of ground each year. In southern China, in Formosa
and in parts of Japan two crops of rice are grown; in the Chekiang
province there may be a crop of rape, of wheat or barley or of
windsor beans or clover which is followed in midsummer by another of
cotton or of rice. In the Shantung province wheat or barley in the
winter and spring may be followed in summer by large or small
millet, sweet potatoes, soy beans or peanuts. At Tientsin, 39 deg
north, in the latitude of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Springfield,
Illinois, we talked with a farmer who followed his crop of wheat on
his small holding with one of onions and the onions with cabbage,
realizing from the three crops at the rate of $163, gold, per acre;
and with another who planted Irish potatoes at the earliest
opportunity in the spring, marketing them when small, and following
these with radishes, the radishes with cabbage, realizing from the
three crops at the rate of $203 per acre.

Nearly 500,000,000 people are being maintained, chiefly upon the
products of an area smaller than the improved farm lands of the
United States. Complete a square on the lines drawn from Chicago
southward to the Gulf and westward across Kansas, and there will be
enclosed an area greater than the cultivated fields of China, Korea
and Japan and from which five times our present population are fed.

The rainfall in these countries is not only larger than that even in
our Atlantic and Gulf states, but it falls more exclusively during
the summer season when its efficiency in crop production may be
highest. South China has a rainfall of some 80 inches with little of
it during the winter, while in our southern states the rainfall is
nearer 60 inches with less than one-half of it between June and
September. Along a line drawn from Lake Superior through central
Texas the yearly precipitation is about 30 inches but only 16 inches
of this falls during the months May to September; while in the
Shantung province, China, with an annual rainfall of little more
than 24 inches, 17 of these fall during the months designated and
most of this in July and August. When it is stated that under the
best tillage and with no loss of water through percolation, most of
our agricultural crops require 300 to 600 tons of water for each ton
of dry substance brought to maturity, it can be readily understood
that the right amount of available moisture, coming at the proper
time, must be one of the prime factors of a high maintenance
capacity for any soil, and hence that in the Far East, with their
intensive methods, it is possible to make their soils yield large
returns.

The selection of rice and of the millets as the great staple food
crops of these three nations, and the systems of agriculture they
have evolved to realize the most from them, are to us remarkable and
indicate a grasp of essentials and principles which may well cause
western nations to pause and reflect.

Notwithstanding the large and favorable rainfall of these countries,
each of the nations have selected the one crop which permits them to
utilize not only practically the entire amount of rain which falls
upon their fields, but in addition enormous volumes of the run-off
from adjacent uncultivable mountain country. Wherever paddy fields
are practicable there rice is grown. In the three main islands of
Japan 56 per cent of the cultivated fields, 11,000 square miles, is
laid out for rice growing and is maintained under water from
transplanting to near harvest time, after which the land is allowed
to dry, to be devoted to dry land crops during the balance of the
year, where the season permits.

To anyone who studies the agricultural methods of the Far East in
the field it is evident that these people, centuries ago, came to
appreciate the value of water in crop production as no other nations
have. They have adapted conditions to crops and crops to conditions
until with rice they have a cereal which permits the most intense
fertilization and at the same time the ensuring of maximum yields
against both drought and flood. With the practice of western nations
in all humid climates, no matter how completely and highly we
fertilize, in more years than not yields are reduced by a deficiency
or an excess of water.

It is difficult to convey, by word or map, an adequate conception of
the magnitude of the systems of canalization which contribute
primarily to rice culture. A conservative estimate would place the
miles of canals in China at fully 200,000 and there are probably
more miles of canal in China, Korea and Japan than there are miles
of railroad in the United States. China alone has as many acres in
rice each year as the United States has in wheat and her annual
product is more than double and probably threefold our annual wheat
crop, and yet the whole of the rice area produces at least one and
sometimes two other crops each year.

The selection of the quick-maturing, drought-resisting millets as
the great staple food crops to be grown wherever water is not
available for irrigation, and the almost universal planting in hills
or drills, permitting intertillage, thus adopting centuries ago the
utilization of earth mulches in conserving soil moisture, has
enabled these people to secure maximum returns in seasons of drought
and where the rainfall is small. The millets thrive in the hot
summer climates; they survive when the available soil moisture is
reduced to a low limit, and they grow vigorously when the heavy
rains come. Thus we find in the Far East, with more rainfall and a
better distribution of it than occurs in the United States, and with
warmer, longer seasons, that these people have with rare wisdom
combined both irrigation and dry farming methods to an extent and
with an intensity far beyond anything our people have ever dreamed,
in order that they might maintain their dense populations.

Notwithstanding the fact that in each of these countries the soils
are naturally more than ordinarily deep, inherently fertile and
enduring, judicious and rational methods of fertilization are
everywhere practiced; but not until recent years, and only in Japan,
have mineral commercial fertilizers been used. For centuries,
however, all cultivated lands, including adjacent hill and mountain
sides, the canals, streams and the sea have been made to contribute
what they could toward the fertilization of cultivated fields and
these contributions in the aggregate have been large. In China, in
Korea and in Japan all but the inaccessible portions of their vast
extent of mountain and hill lands have long been taxed to their full
capacity for fuel, lumber and herbage for green manure and compost
material; and the ash of practically all of the fuel and of all of
the lumber used at home finds its way ultimately to the fields as
fertilizer.

In China enormous quantities of canal mud are applied to the fields,
sometimes at the rate of even 70 and more tons per acre. So, too,
where there are no canals, both soil and subsoil are carried into
the villages and there between the intervals when needed they are,
at the expense of great labor, composted with organic refuse and
often afterwards dried and pulverized before being carried back and
used on the fields as home-made fertilizers. Manure of all kinds,
human and animal, is religiously saved and applied to the fields in
a manner which secures an efficiency far above our own practices.
Statistics obtained through the Bureau of Agriculture, Japan, place
the amount of human waste in that country in 1908 at 23,950,295
tons, or 1.75 tons per acre of her cultivated land. The
International Concession of the city of Shanghai, in 1908, sold to a
Chinese contractor the privilege of entering residences and public
places early in the morning of each day in the year and removing the
night soil, receiving therefor more than $31,000, gold, for 78,000
tons of waste. All of this we not only throw away but expend much
larger sums in doing so.

Japan's production of fertilizing material, regularly prepared and
applied to the land annually, amounts to more than 4.5 tons per acre
of cultivated field exclusive of the commercial fertilizers
purchased. Between Shanhaikwan and Mukden in Manchuria we passed, on
June 18th, thousands of tons of the dry highly nitrified compost
soil recently carried into the fields and laid down in piles where
it was waiting to be "fed to the crops."

It was not until 1888, and then after a prolonged war of more than
thirty years, generaled by the best scientists of all Europe, that
it was finally conceded as demonstrated that leguminous plants
acting as hosts for lower organisms living on their roots are
largely responsible for the maintenance of soil nitrogen, drawing it
directly from the air to which it is returned through the processes
of decay. But centuries of practice had taught the Far East farmers
that the culture and use of these crops are essential to enduring
fertility, and so in each of the three countries the growing of
legumes in rotation with other crops very extensively for the
express purpose of fertilizing the soil is one of their old, fixed
practices.

Just before, or immediately after the rice crop is harvested, fields
are often sowed to "clover" (Astragalus sinicus) which is allowed to
grow until near the next transplanting time when it is either turned
under directly, or more often stacked along the canals and saturated
while doing so with soft mud dipped from the bottom of the canal.
After fermenting twenty or thirty days it is applied to the field.
And so it is literally true that these old world farmers whom we
regard as ignorant, perhaps because they do not ride sulky plows as
we do, have long included legumes in their crop rotation, regarding
them as indispensable.

Time is a function of every life process as it is of every physical,
chemical and mental reaction. The husbandman is an industrial
biologist and as such is compelled to shape his operations so as to
conform with the time requirements of his crops. The oriental farmer
is a time economizer beyond all others. He utilizes the first and
last minute and all that are between. The foreigner accuses the
Chinaman of being always long on time, never in a fret, never in a
hurry. This is quite true and made possible for the reason that they
are a people who definitely set their faces toward the future and
lead time by the forelock. They have long realized that much time is
required to transform organic matter into forms available for plant
food and although they are the heaviest users in the world, the
largest portion of this organic matter is predigested with soil or
subsoil before it is applied to their fields, and at an enormous
cost of human time and labor, but it practically lengthens their
growing season and enables them to adopt a system of multiple
cropping which would not otherwise be possible. By planting in hills
and rows with intertillage it is very common to see three crops
growing upon the same field at one time, but in different stages of
maturity, one nearly ready to harvest one just coming up, and the
other at the stage when it is drawing most heavily upon the soil. By
such practice, with heavy fertilization, and by supplemental
irrigation when needful, the soil is made to do full duty throughout
the growing season.

Then, notwithstanding the enormous acreage of rice planted each year
in these countries, it is all set in hills and every spear is
transplanted. Doing this, they save in many ways except in the
matter of human labor, which is the one thing they have in excess.
By thoroughly preparing the seed bed, fertilizing highly and giving
the most careful attention, they are able to grow on one acre,
during 30 to 50 days, enough plants to occupy ten acres and in the
mean time on the other nine acres crops are maturing, being
harvested and the fields being fitted to receive the rice when it is
ready for transplanting, and in effect this interval of time is
added to their growing season.

Silk culture is a great and, in some ways, one of the most
remarkable industries of the Orient. Remarkable for its magnitude;
for having had its birthplace apparently in oldest China at least
2700 years B. C.; for having been laid on the domestication of a
wild insect of the woods; and for having lived through more than
4000 years, expanding until a million-dollar cargo of the product
has been laid down on our western coast and rushed by special fast
express to the cast for the Christmas trade.

A low estimate of China's production of raw silk would be
120,000,000 pounds annually, and this with the output of Japan,
Korea and a small area of southern Manchuria, would probably exceed
150,000,000 pounds annually, representing a total value of perhaps
$700,000,000, quite equaling in value the wheat crop of the United
States, but produced on less than one-eighth the area of our wheat
fields.

The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of the great
industries of these nations, taking rank with that of sericulture if
not above it in the important part it plays in the welfare of the
people. There is little reason to doubt that this industry has its
foundation in the need of something to render boiled water palatable
for drinking purposes. The drinking of boiled water is universally
adopted in these countries as an individually available and
thoroughly efficient safeguard against that class of deadly disease
germs which thus far it has been impossible to exclude from the
drinking water of any densely peopled country.

Judged by the success of the most thorough sanitary measures thus
far instituted, and taking into consideration the inherent
difficulties which must increase enormously with increasing
populations, it appears inevitable that modern methods must
ultimately fail in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety can
be secured only in some manner having the equivalent effect of
boiling drinking water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races.

In the year 1907 Japan had 124,482 acres of land in tea plantations,
producing 60,877,975 pounds of cured tea. In China the volume
annually produced is much larger than that of Japan, 40,000,000
pounds going annually to Tibet alone from the Szechwan province and
the direct export to foreign countries was, in 1905, 176,027,255
pounds, and in 1906 it was 180,271,000, so that their annual export
must exceed 200,000,000 pounds with a total annual output more than
double this amount of cured tea.

But above any other factor, and perhaps greater than all of them
combined in contributing to the high maintenance efficiency attained
in these countries must be placed the standard of living to which
the industrial classes have been compelled to adjust themselves,
combined with their remarkable industry and with the most intense
economy they practice along every line of effort and of living.

Almost every foot of land is made to contribute material for food,
fuel or fabric. Everything which can be made edible serves as food
for man or domestic animals. Whatever cannot be eaten or worn is
used for fuel. The wastes of the body, of fuel and of fabric worn
beyond other use are taken back to the field; before doing so they
are housed against waste from weather, compounded with intelligence
and forethought and patiently labored with through one, three or
even six months, to bring them into the most efficient form to serve
as manure for the soil or as feed for the crop. It seems to be a
golden rule with these industrial classes, or if not golden, then an
inviolable one, that whenever an extra hour or day of labor can
promise even a little larger return then that shall be given, and
neither a rainy day nor the hottest sunshine shall be permitted to
cancel the obligation or defer its execution.






I

FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN





We left the United States from Seattle for Shanghai, China, sailing
by the northern route, at one P. M. February second, reaching
Yokohama February 19th and Shanghai, March 1st. It was our aim
throughout the journey to keep in close contact with the field and
crop problems and to converse personally, through interpreters or
otherwise, with the farmers, gardeners and fruit growers themselves;
and we have taken pains in many cases to visit the same fields or
the same region two, three or more times at different intervals
during the season in order to observe different phases of the same
cultural or fertilization methods as these changed or varied with
the season.

Our first near view of Japan came in the early morning of February
19th when passing some three miles off the point where the Pacific
passenger steamer Dakota was beached and wrecked in broad daylight
without loss of life two years ago. The high rounded hills were
clothed neither in the dense dark forest green of Washington and
Vancouver, left sixteen days before, nor yet in the brilliant
emerald such as Ireland's hills in June fling in unparalleled
greeting to passengers surfeited with the dull grey of the rolling
ocean. This lack of strong forest growth and even of shrubs and
heavy herbage on hills covered with deep soil, neither cultivated
nor suffering from serious erosion, yet surrounded by favorable
climatic conditions, was our first great surprise.

To the southward around the point, after turning northward into the
deep bay, similar conditions prevailed, and at ten o'clock we stood
off Uraga where Commodore Perry anchored on July 8th, 1853, bearing
to the Shogun President Fillmore's letter which opened the doors of
Japan to the commerce of the world and, it is to be hoped brought to
her people, with their habits of frugality and industry so indelibly
fixed by centuries of inheritance, better opportunities for
development along those higher lines destined to make life still
more worth living.

As the Tosa Maru drew alongside the pier at Yokohama it was raining
hard and this had attired an army after the manner of Robinson
Crusoe, dressed as seen in Fig. 1, ready to carry you and yours to
the Customs house and beyond for one, two, three or five cents.
Strong was the contrast when the journey was reversed and we
descended the gang plank at Seattle, where no one sought the
opportunity of moving baggage.

Through the kindness of Captain Harrison of the Tosa Maru in calling
an interpreter by wireless to meet the steamer, it was possible to
utilize the entire interval of stop in Yokohama to the best
advantage in the fields and gardens spread over the eighteen miles
of plain extending to Tokyo, traversed by both electric tram and
railway lines, each running many trains making frequent stops; so
that this wonderfully fertile and highly tilled district could be
readily and easily reached at almost any point.

We had left home in a memorable storm of snow, sleet and rain which
cut out of service telegraph and telephone lines over a large part
of the United States; we had sighted the Aleutian Islands, seeing
and feeling nothing on the way which could suggest a warm soil and
green fields, hence our surprise was great to find the jinricksha
men with bare feet and legs naked to the thighs, and greater still
when we found, before we were outside the city limits, that the
electric tram was running between fields and gardens green with
wheat, barley, onions, carrots, cabbage and other vegetables. We
were rushing through the Orient with everything outside the car so
strange and different from home that the shock came like a bolt of
lightning out of a clear sky.

In the car every man except myself and one other was smoking tobacco
and that other was inhaling camphor through an ivory mouthpiece
resembling a cigar holder closed at the end. Several women, tiring
of sitting foreign style, slipped off--I cannot say out of--their
shoes and sat facing the windows, with toes crossed behind them on
the seat. The streets were muddy from the rain and everybody
Japanese was on rainy-day wooden shoes, the soles carried three to
four inches above the ground by two cross blocks, in the manner seen
in Fig. 2. A mother, with baby on her back and a daughter of sixteen
years came into the car. Notwithstanding her high shoes the mother
had dipped one toe into the mud. Seated, she slipped her foot off.
Without evident instructions the pretty black-eyed, glossy-haired,
red-lipped lass, with cheeks made rosy, picked up the shoe, withdrew
a piece of white tissue paper from the great pocket in her sleeve,
deftly cleaned the otherwise spotless white cloth sock and then the
shoe, threw the paper on the floor, looked to see that her fingers
were not soiled, then set the shoe at her mother's foot, which found
its place without effort or glance.

Everything here was strange and the scenes shifted with the speed of
the wildest dream. Now it was driving piles for the foundation of a
bridge. A tripod of poles was erected above the pile and from it
hung a pulley. Over the pulley passed a rope from the driving weight
and from its end at the pulley ten cords extended to the ground. In
a circle at the foot of the tripod stood ten agile Japanese women.
They were the hoisting engine. They chanted in perfect rhythm,
hauled and stepped, dropped the weight and hoisted again, making up
for heavier hammer and higher drop by more blows per minute. When we
reached Shanghai we saw the pile driver being worked from above.
Fourteen Chinese men stood upon a raised staging, each with a
separate cord passing direct from the hand to the weight below. A
concerted, half-musical chant, modulated to relieve monotony, kept
all hands together. What did the operation of this machine cost?
Thirteen cents, gold, per man per day, which covered fuel and
lubricant, both automatically served. Two additional men managed the
piles, two directed the hammer, eighteen manned the outfit. Two
dollars and thirty-four cents per day covered fuel, superintendence
and repairs. There was almost no capital invested in machinery. Men
were plenty and to spare. Rice was the fuel, cooked without salt,
boiled stiff, reinforced with a hit of pork or fish, appetized with
salted cabbage or turnip and perhaps two or three of forty and more
other vegetable relishes. And are these men strong and happy? They
certainly were strong. They are steadily increasing their millions,
and as one stood and watched them at their work their faces were
often wreathed in smiles and wore what seemed a look of satisfaction
and contentment.

Among the most common sights on our rides from Yokohama to Tokyo,
both within the city and along the roads leading to the fields,
starting early in the morning, were the loads of night soil carried
on the shoulders of men and on the backs of animals, but most
commonly on strong carts drawn by men, bearing six to ten tightly
covered wooden containers holding forty, sixty or more pounds each.
Strange as it may seem, there are not today and apparently never
have been, even in the largest and oldest cities of Japan, China or
Korea, anything corresponding to the hydraulic systems of sewage
disposal used now by western nations. Provision is made for the
removal of storm waters but when I asked my interpreter if it was
not the custom of the city during the winter months to discharge its
night soil into the sea, as a quicker and cheaper mode of disposal,
his reply came quick and sharp, "No, that would be waste. We throw
nothing away. It is worth too much money." In such public places as
rail way stations provision is made for saving, not for wasting, and
even along the country roads screens invite the traveler to stop,
primarily for profit to the owner more than for personal
convenience.

Between Yokohama and Tokyo along the electric car line and not far
distant from the seashore, there were to be seen in February very
many long, fence-high screens extending east and west, strongly
inclined to the north, and built out of rice straw, closely tied
together and supported on bamboo poles carried upon posts of wood
set in the ground. These screens, set in parallel series of five to
ten or more in number and several hundred feet long, were used for
the purpose of drying varieties of delicate seaweed, these being
spread out in the manner shown in Fig. 3.

The seaweed is first spread upon separate ten by twelve inch straw
mats, forming a thin layer seven by eight inches. These mats are
held by means of wooden skewers forced through the body of the
screen, exposing the seaweed to the direct sunshine. After becoming
dry the rectangles of seaweed are piled in bundles an inch thick,
cut once in two, forming packages four by seven inches, which are
neatly tied and thus exposed for sale as soup stock and for other
purposes. To obtain this seaweed from the ocean small shrubs and the
limbs of trees are set up in the bottom of shallow water, as seen in
Fig. 4. To these limbs the seaweeds become attached, grow to
maturity and are then gathered by hand. By this method of culture
large amounts of important food stuff are grown for the support of
the people on areas otherwise wholly unproductive.

Another rural feature, best shown by photograph taken in February,
is the method of training pear orchards in Japan, with their limbs
tied down upon horizontal over-bead trellises at a height under
which a man can readily walk erect and easily reach the fruit with
the hand while standing upon the ground. Pear orchards thus form
arbors of greater or less size, the trees being set in quincunx
order about twelve feet apart in and between the rows. Bamboo poles
are used overhead and these carried on posts of the same material
1.5 to 2.5 inches in diameter, to which they are tied. Such a pear
orchard is shown in Fig. 5.

The limbs of the pear trees are trained strictly in one plane, tying
them down and pruning out those not desired. As a result the ground
beneath is completely shaded and every pear is within reach, which
is a great convenience when it becomes desirable to protect the
fruit from insects, by tying paper bags over every pear as seen in
Figs. 6 and 7. The orchard ground is kept free from weeds and not
infrequently is covered with a layer of rice or other straw,
extensively used in Japan as a ground cover with various crops and
when so used is carefully laid in handfuls from bundles, the straws
being kept parallel as when harvested.

To one from a country of 160-acre farms, with roads four rods wide;
of cities with broad streets and residences with green lawns and
ample back yards; and where the cemeteries are large and beautiful
parks, the first days of travel in these old countries force the
over-crowding upon the attention as nothing else can. One feels that
the cities are greatly over-crowded with houses and shops, and these
with people and wares; that the country is over-crowded with fields
and the fields with crops; and that in Japan the over-crowding is
greatest of all in the cemeteries, gravestones almost touching and
markers for families literally in bundles at a grave, while round
about there may be no free country whatever, dwellings, gardens or
rice paddies contesting the tiny allotted areas too closely to leave
even foot-paths between.

Unless recently modified through foreign influence the streets of
villages and cities are narrow, as seen in Fig. 8, where however the
street is unusually broad. This is a village in the Hakone district
on a beautiful lake of the same name, where stands an Imperial
summer palace, seen near the center of the view on a hill across the
lake. The roofs of the houses here are typical of the neat, careful
thatching with rice straw, very generally adopted in place of tile
for the country villages throughout much of Japan. The shops and
stores, open full width directly upon the street, are filled to
overflowing, as seen in Fig. 9 and in Fig. 22.

In the canalized regions of China the country villages crowd both
banks of a canal, as is the case in Fig. 10. Here, too, often is a
single street and it very narrow, very crowded and very busy. Stone
steps lead from the houses down into the water where clothing,
vegetables, rice and what not are conveniently washed. In this
particular village two rows of houses stand on one side of the canal
separated by a very narrow street, and a single row on the other.
Between the bridge where the camera was exposed and one barely
discernible in the background, crossing the canal a third of a mile
distant, we counted upon one side, walking along the narrow street,
eighty houses each with its family, usually of three generations and
often of four. Thus in the narrow strip, 154 feet broad, including
16 feet of street and 30 feet of canal, with its three lines of
houses. lived no less than 240 families and more than 1200 and
probably nearer 2000 people.

When we turn to the crowding of fields in the country nothing except
seeing can tell so forcibly the fact as such landscapes as those of
Figs. 11, 12 and 13, one in Japan, one in Korea and one in China,
not far from Nanking, looking from the hills across the fields to
the broad Yangtse kiang, barely discernible as a band of light along
the horizon.

The average area of the rice field in Japan is less than five square
rods and that of her upland fields only about twenty. In the case of
the rice fields the small size is necessitated partly by the
requirement of holding water on the sloping sides of the valley, as
seen in Fig. 11. These small areas do not represent the amount of
land worked by one family, the average for Japan being more nearly
2.5 acres. But the lands worked by one family are seldom contiguous,
they may even be widely scattered and very often rented.

The people generally live in villages, going often considerable
distances to their work. Recognizing the great disadvantage of
scattered holdings broken into such small areas, the Japanese
Government has passed laws for the adjustment of farm lands which
have been in force since 1900. It provides for the exchange of
lands; for changing boundaries; for changing or abolishing roads,
embankments, ridges or canals and for alterations in irrigation and
drainage which would ensure larger areas with channels and roads
straightened, made less numerous and less wasteful of time, labor
and land. Up to 1907 Japan had issued permits for the readjustment
of over 240,000 acres, and Fig. 14 is a landscape in one of these
readjusted districts. To provide capable experts for planning and
supervising these changes the Government in 1905 intrusted the
training of men to the higher agricultural school belonging to the
Dai Nippon Agricultural Association and since 1906 the Agricultural
College and the Kogyokusha have undertaken the same task and now
there are men sufficient to push the work as rapidly as desired.

It may be remembered, too, as showing how, along other fundamental
lines, Japan is taking effective steps to improve the condition of
her people, that she already has her Imperial highways extending
from one province to another; her prefectural roads which connect
the cities and villages within the prefecture; and those more local
which serve the farms and villages. Each of the three systems of
roads is maintained by a specific tax levied for the purpose which
is expended under proper supervision, a designated section of road
being kept in repair through the year by a specially appointed crew,
as is the practice in railroad maintenance. The result is, Japan has
roads maintained in excellent condition, always narrow, sacrificing
the minimum of land, and everywhere without fences.

How the fields are crowded with crops and all available land is made
to do full duty in these old, long-tilled countries is evident in
Fig. 15 where even the narrow dividing ridges but a foot wide, which
retain the water on the rice paddies, are bearing a heavy crop of
soy beans; and where may be seen the narrow pear orchard standing on
the very slightest rise of ground, not a foot above the water all
around, which could better be left in grading the paddies to proper
level.

How closely the ground itself may be crowded with plants is seen in
Fig. 16, where a young peach orchard, whose tree tops were six feet
through, planted in rows twenty-two feet apart, had also ten rows of
cabbage, two rows of large windsor beans and a row of garden peas.
Thirteen rows of vegetables in 22 feet, all luxuriant and strong,
and note the judgment shown in placing the tallest plants, needing
the most sun, in the center between the trees.

But these old people, used to crowding and to being crowded, and
long ago capable of making four blades of grass grow where Nature
grew but one, have also learned how to double the acreage where a
crop needs more elbow than it does standing room, as seen in Fig.
17. This man's garden had an area of but 63 by 68 feet and two
square rods of this was held sacred to the family grave mound, and
yet his statement of yields, number of crops and prices made his
earning $100 a year on less than one-tenth of an acre.

His crop of cucumbers on less than .06 of an acre would bring him
$20. He had already sold $5 worth of greens and a second crop would
follow the cucumbers. He had just irrigated his garden from an
adjoining canal, using a foot-power pump, and stated that until it
rained he would repeat the watering once per week. It was his wife
who stood in the garden and, although wearing trousers, her dress
showed full regard for modesty.

But crowding crops more closely in the field not only requires
higher feeding to bring greater returns, but also relatively greater
care, closer watchfulness in a hundred ways and a patience far
beyond American measure; and so, before the crowding of the crops in
the field and along with it, there came to these very old farmers a
crowding of the grey matter in the brain with the evolution of
effective texture. This is shown in his fields which crowd the
landscape. It is seen in the crops which crowd his fields. You see
it in the old man's face, Fig. 18, standing opposite his compeer,
Prince Ching, Fig. 19, each clad in winter dress which is the
embodiment of conversation, retaining the fires of the body for its
own needs, to release the growth on mountain sides for other uses.
And when one realizes how, nearly to the extreme limits,
conservation along all important lines is being practiced as an
inherited instinct, there need be no surprise when one reflects that
the two men, one as feeder and the other as leader, are standing in
the fore of a body of four hundred millions of people who have
marched as a nation through perhaps forty centuries, and who now, in
the light and great promise of unfolding science have their faces
set toward a still more hopeful and longer future.

On February 21st the Tosa Maru left Yokohama for Kobe at schedule
time on the tick of the watch, as she had done from Seattle. All
Japanese steamers appear to be moved with the promptness of a
railway train. On reaching Kobe we transferred to the Yamaguchi Maru
which sailed the following morning, to shorten the time of reaching
Shanghai. This left but an afternoon for a trip into the country
between Kobe and Osaka, where we found, if possible, even higher and
more intensive culture practices than on the Tokyo plain, there
being less land not carrying a winter crop. And Fig. 20 shows how
closely the crops crowd the houses and shops. Here were very many
cement lined cisterns or sheltered reservoirs for collecting manures
and preparing fertilizers and the appearance of both soil and crops
showed in a marked manner to what advantage. We passed a garden of
nearly an acre entirely devoted to English violets just coming into
full bloom. They were grown in long parallel east and west beds
about three feet wide. On the north edge of each bed was erected a
rice-straw screen four feet high which inclined to the south,
overhanging the bed at an angle of some thirty-five degrees, thus
forming a sort of bake-oven tent which reflected the sun, broke the
force of the wind and checked the loss of heat absorbed by the soil.

The voyage from Kobe to Moji was made between 10 in the morning,
February 24th, and 5 .30 P. M. of February 25th over a quiet sea
with an enjoyable ride. Being fogbound during the night gave us the
whole of Japan's beautiful Inland Sea, enchanting beyond measure, in
all its near and distant beauty but which no pen, no brush, no
camera may attempt. Only the eye can convey. Before reaching harbor
the tide had been rising and the strait separating Honshu from
Kyushu island was running like a mighty swirling river between Moji
and Shimonoseki, dangerous to attempt in the dark, so we waited
until morning.

There was cargo to take on board and the steamer must coal. No
sooner had the anchor dropped and the steamer swung into the current
than lighters came alongside with out-going freight. The small,
strong, agile Japanese stevedores had this task completed by 8:30 P.
M. and when we returned to the deck after supper another scene was
on. The cargo lighters had gone and four large barges bearing 250
tons of coal had taken their places on opposite sides of the
steamer, each illuminated with buckets of blazing coal or by burning
conical heaps on the surface. From the bottom of these pits in the
darkness the illumination suggested huge decapitated ant heaps in
the wildest frenzy, for the coal seemed covered and there was hurry
in every direction. Men and women, boys and girls, bending to their
tasks, were filling shallow saucer-shaped baskets with coal and
stacking them eight to ten high in a semi-circle, like coin for
delivery. Rising out of these pits sixteen feet up the side of the
steamer and along her deck to the chutes leading to her bunkers were
what seemed four endless human chains, in service the prototype of
our modern conveyors, but here each link animated by its own power.
Up these conveyors the loaded buckets passed, one following another
at the rate of 40 to 60 per minute, to return empty by the
descending line, and over the four chains one hundred tons per hour,
for 250 tons of coal passed to the bunkers in two and a half hours.
Both men and women stood in the line and at the upper turn of one of
these, emptying the buckets down the chute, was a mother with her
two-year-old child in the sling on back, where it rocked and swayed
to and fro, happy the entire time. It was often necessary for the
mother to adjust her baby in the sling whenever it was leaning
uncomfortably too far to one side or the other, but she did it
skillfully, always with a shrug of the shoulders, for both hands
were full. The mother looked strong, was apparently accepting her
lot as a matter of course and often, with a smile, turned her face
to the child, who patted it and played with her ears and hair.
Probably her husband was doing his part in a more strenuous place in
the chain and neither had time to be troubled with affinities for it
was 10:30 P. M. when the baskets stopped, and somewhere no doubt
there was a home to be reached and perhaps supper to get. Shall we
be able, when our numbers have vastly increased, to permit all
needful earnings to be acquired in a better way?

We left Moji in the early morning and late in the evening of the
same day entered the beautiful harbor of Nagasaki, all on board
waiting until morning for a launch to go ashore. We were to sail
again at noon so available time for observation was short and we set
out in a ricksha at once for our first near view of terraced
gardening on the steep hillsides in Japan. In reaching them and in
returning our course led through streets paved with long, thick and
narrow stone blocks, having deep open gutters on one or both sides
close along the houses, into which waste water was emptied and
through which the storm waters found their way to the sea. Few of
these streets were more than twelve feet wide and close watching,
with much dodging, was required to make way through them. Here, too,
the night soil of the city was being removed in closed receptacles
on the shoulders of men, on the backs of horses and cattle and on
carts drawn by either. Other men and women were hurrying along with
baskets of vegetables well illustrated in Fig. 21, some with fresh
cabbage, others with high stacks of crisp lettuce, some with
monstrous white radishes or turnips, others with bundles of onions,
all coming down from the terraced gardens to the markets. We passed
loads of green bamboo poles just cut, three inches in diameter at
the butt and twenty feet long, drawn on carts. Both men and women
were carrying young children and older ones were playing and singing
in the street. Very many old women, some feeble looking, moved,
loaded, through the throng. Homely little dogs, an occasional lean
cat, and hens and roosters scurried across the street from one low
market or store to another. Back of the rows of small stores and
shops fronting on the clean narrow streets were the dwellings whose
exits seemed to open through the stores, few or no open courts of
any size separating them from the market or shop. The opportunity
which the oriental housewife may have in the choice of vegetables on
going to the market, and the attractive manner of displaying such
products in Japan, are seen in Fig. 22.

We finally reached one of the terraced hillsides which rise five
hundred to a thousand feet above the harbor with sides so steep that
garden areas have a width of seldom more than twenty to thirty feet
and often less, while the front of each terrace may be a stone wall,
sometimes twelve feet high, often more than six, four and five feet
being the most common height. One of these hillside slopes is seen
in Fig. 23. These terraced gardens are both short and narrow and
most of them bounded by stone walls on three sides, suggesting house
foundations, the two end walls sloping down the hill from the height
of the back terrace, dropping to the ground level in front, these
forming foot-paths leading up the slope occasionally with one, two
or three steps in places.

Each terrace sloped slightly down the hill at a small angle and had
a low ridge along the front. Around its entire border a narrow drain
or furrow was arranged to collect surface water and direct it to
drainage channels or into a catch basin where it might be put back
on the garden or be used in preparing liquid fertilizer. At one
corner of many of these small terraced gardens were cement lined
pits, used both as catch basins for water and as receptacles for
liquid manure or as places in which to prepare compost. Far up the
steep paths, too, along either side, we saw many piles of stable
manure awaiting application, all of which had been brought up the
slopes in backets on bamboo poles, carried on the shoulders of men
and women.






II

GRAVE LANDS OF CHINA





The launch had returned the passengers to the steamer at 11:30; the
captain was on the bridge; prompt to the minute at the call "Hoist
away" the signal went below and the Yamaguchi's whistle filled the
harbor and over-flowed the hills. The cable wound in, and at twelve,
noon, we were leaving Nagasaki, now a city of 153,000 and the
western doorway of a nation of fifty-one millions of people but of
little importance before the sixteenth century when it became the
chief mart of Portuguese trade. We were to pass the Koreans on our
right and enter the portals of a third nation of four hundred
millions. We had left a country which had added eighty-five millions
to its population in one hundred years and which still has twenty
acres for each man, woman and child, to pass through one which has
but one and a half acres per capita, and were going to another whose
allotment of acres, good and bad, is less than 2.4. We had gone from
practices by which three generations had exhausted strong virgin
fields, and were coming to others still fertile after thirty
centuries of cropping. On January 30th we crossed the head waters of
the Mississippi-Missouri, four thousand miles from its mouth, and on
March 1st were in the mouth of the Yangtse river whose waters are
gathered from a basin in which dwell two hundred millions of people.

The Yamaguchi reached Woosung in the night and anchored to await
morning and tide before ascending the Hwangpoo, believed by some
geographers to be the middle of three earlier delta arms of the
Yangtse kiang, the southern entering the sea at Hangchow 120 miles
further south, the third being the present stream. As we wound
through this great delta plain toward Shanghai, the city of foreign
concessions to all nationalities, the first striking feature was the
"graves of the fathers", of "the ancestors". At first the numerous
grass-covered hillocks dotting the plain seemed to be stacks of
grain or straw; then came the query whether they might not be huge
compost heaps awaiting distribution in the fields, but as the river
brought us nearer to them we seemed to be moving through a land of
ancient mound builders and Fig. 24 shows, in its upper section,
their appearance as seen in the distance.

As the journey led on among the fields, so large were the mounds,
often ten to twelve feet high and twenty or more feet at the base;
so grass-covered and apparently neglected; so numerous and so
irregularly scattered, without apparent regard for fields, that when
we were told these were graves we could not give credence to the
statement, but before the city was reached we saw places where, by
the shifting of the channel, the river had cut into some of these
mounds, exposing brick vaults, some so low as to be under water part
of the time, and we wonder if the fact does not also record a slow
subsidence of the delta plain under the ever increasing load of
river silt.

A closer view of these graves in the same delta plain is given in
the lower section of Fig. 24, where they are seen in the midst of
fields and to occupy not only large areas of valuable land but to be
much in the way of agricultural operations. A still closer view of
other groups, with a farm village in the background, is shown in the
middle section of the same illustration, and here it is better seen
how large is the space occupied by them. On the right in the same
view may be seen a line of six graves surmounting a common lower
base which is a type of the larger and higher ones so suggestive of
buildings seen in the horizon of the upper section.

Everywhere we went in China, about all of the very old and large
cities, the proportion of grave land to cultivated fields is very
large. In the vicinity of Canton Christian college, on Honam island,
more than fifty per cent of the land was given over to graves and in
many places they were so close that one could step from one to
another. They are on the higher and dryer lands, the cultivated
areas occupying ravines and the lower levels to which water may be
more easily applied and which are the most productive. Hilly lands
not so readily cultivated, and especially if within reach of cities,
are largely so used, as seen in Fig. 25, where the graves are marked
by excavated shelves rather than by mounds, as on the plains. These
grave lands are not altogether unproductive for they are generally
overgrown with herbage of one or another kind and used as pastures
for geese, sheep, goats and cattle, and it is not at all uncommon,
when riding along a canal, to see a huge water buffalo projected
against the sky from the summit of one of the largest and highest
grave mounds within reach. If the herbage is not fed off by animals
it is usually cut for feed, for fuel, for green manure or for use in
the production of compost to enrich the soil.

Caskets may be placed directly upon the surface of a field, encased
in brick vaults with tile roofs, forming such clusters as was seen
on the bank of the Grand Canal in Chekiang province, represented in
the lower section of Fig. 26, or they may stand singly in the midst
of a garden, as in the upper section of the same figure; in a rice
paddy entirely surrounded by water parts of the year, and indeed in
almost any unexpected place. In Shanghai in 1898, 2,763 exposed
coffined corpses were removed outside the International Settlement
or buried by the authorities.

Further north, in the Shantung province, where the dry season is
more prolonged and where a severe drought had made grass short, the
grave lands had become nearly naked soil, as seen in Fig. 27 where a
Shantung farmer had just dug a temporary well to irrigate his little
field of barley. Within the range of the camera, as held to take
this view, more than forty grave mounds besides the seven near by,
are near enough to be fixed on the negative and be discernible under
a glass, indicating what extensive areas of land, in the aggregate,
are given over to graves.

Still further north, in Chihli, a like story is told in, if
possible, more emphatic manner and fully vouched for in the next
illustration, Fig. 28, which shows a typical family group, to be
observed in so many places between Taku and Tientsin and beyond
toward Peking. As we entered the mouth of the Pei-ho for Tientsin,
far away to the vanishing horizon there stretched an almost naked
plain except for the vast numbers of these "graves of the fathers",
so strange, so naked, so regular in form and so numerous that more
than an hour of our journey had passed before we realized that they
were graves and that the country here was perhaps more densely
peopled with the dead than with the living. In so many places there
was the huge father grave, often capped with what in the distance
suggested a chimney, and the many associated smaller ones, that it
was difficult to realize in passing what they were.

It is a common custom, even if the residence has been permanently
changed to some distant province, to take the bodies back for
interment in the family group; and it is this custom which leads to
the practice of choosing a temporary location for the body, waiting
for a favorable opportunity to remove it to the family group. This
is often the occasion for the isolated coffin so frequently seen
under a simple thatch of rice straw, as in Fig. 29; and the many
small stone jars containing skeletons of the dead, or portions of
them, standing singly or in rows in the most unexpected places least
in the way in the crowded fields and gardens, awaiting removal to
the final resting place. It is this custom, too, I am told, which
has led to placing a large quantity of caustic lime in the bottom of
the casket, on which the body rests, this acting as an effective
absorbent.

It is the custom in some parts of China, if not in all, to
periodically restore the mounds, maintaining their height and size,
as is seen in the next two illustrations, and to decorate these once
in the year with flying streamers of colored paper, the remnants of
which may be seen in both Figs. 30 and 31, set there as tokens that
the paper money has been burned upon them and its essence sent up in
the smoke for the maintenance of the spirits of their departed
friends. We have our memorial day; they have for centuries observed
theirs with religious fidelity.

The usual expense of a burial among the working people is said to be
$100, Mexican, an enormous burden when the day's wage or the yearly
earning of the family is considered and when there is added to this
the yearly expense of ancestor worship. How such voluntary burdens
are assumed by people under such circumstances is hard to
understand. Missionaries assert it is fear of evil consequences in
this life and of punishment and neglect in the hereafter that leads
to assuming them. Is it not far more likely that such is the price
these people are willing to pay for a good name among the living and
because of their deep and lasting friendship for the departed? Nor
does it seem at all strange that a kindly, warm-hearted people with
strong filial affection should have reached, carry in their long
history, a belief in one spirit of the departed which hovers about
the home, one which hovers about the grave and another which wanders
abroad, for surely there are associations with each of these
conditions which must long and forcefully awaken memories of friends
gone. If this view is possible may not such ancestral worship be an
index of qualities of character strongly fixed and of the highest
worth which, when improvements come that may relieve the heavy
burdens now carried, will only shine more brightly and count more
for right living as well as comfort?

Even in our own case it will hardly be maintained that our burial
customs have reached their best and final solution, for in all
civilized nations they are unnecessarily expensive and far too
cumbersome. It is only necessary to mentally add the accumulation of
a few centuries to our cemeteries to realize how impossible our
practice must become. Clearly there is here a very important line
for betterment which all nationalities should undertake.

When the steamer anchored at Shanghai the day was pleasant and the
rain coats which greeted us in Yokohama were not in evidence but the
numbers who had met the steamer in the hope of an opportunity for
earning a trifle was far greater and in many ways in strong contrast
with the Japanese. We were much surprised to find the men of so
large stature, much above the Chinese usually seen in the United
States. They were fully the equal of large Americans in frame but
quite without surplus flesh yet few appeared underfed. To realize
that these are strong, hardy men it was only necessary to watch them
carrying on their shoulders bales of cotton between them, supported
by a strong bamboo; while the heavy loads they transport on
wheel-barrows through the country over long distances, as seen in
Fig. 32, prove their great endurance. This same type of vehicle,
too, is one of the common means of transporting people, especially
Chinese women, and four six and even eight may be seen riding
together, propelled by a single wheelbarrow man.






III

TO HONGKONG AND CANTON





We had come to learn how the old-world farmers bad been able to
provide materials for food and clothing on such small areas for so
many millions, at so low a price, during so many centuries, and were
anxious to see them at the soil and among the crops. The sun was
still south of the equator, coming north only about twelve miles per
day, so, to save time, we booked on the next steamer for Hongkong to
meet spring at Canton, beyond the Tropic of Cancer, six hundred
miles farther south, and return with her.

On the morning of March 4th the Tosa Maru steamed out into the
Yangtse river, already flowing with the increased speed of ebb tide.
The pilots were on the bridge to guide her course along the narrow
south channel through waters seemingly as brown and turbid as the
Potomac after a rain. It was some distance beyond Gutzlaff Island,
seventy miles to sea, where there is a lighthouse and a telegraph
station receiving six cables, that we crossed the front of the
out-going tide, showing in a sharp line of contrast stretching in
either direction farther than the eye could see, across the course
of the ship and yet it was the season of low water in this river.
During long ages this stream of mighty volume has been loading upon
itself in far-away Tibet, without dredge, barge, fuel or human
effort, unused and there unusable soils, bringing them down from
inaccessible heights across two or three thousand miles, building up
with them, from under the sea, at the gateways of commerce, miles
upon miles of the world's most fertile fields and gardens. Today on
this river, winding through six hundred miles of the most highly
cultivated fields, laid out on river-built plains, go large ocean
steamers to the city of Hankow-Wuchang-Hanyang where 1,770,000
people live and trade within a radius less than four miles; while
smaller steamers push on a thousand miles and are then but 130 feet
above sea level.

Even now, with the aid of current, tide and man, these brown turbid
waters are rapidly adding fertile delta plains for new homes. During
the last twenty-five years Chungming island has grown in length some
1800 feet per year and today a million people are living and growing
rice, wheat, cotton and sweet potatoes on 270 square miles of
fertile plain where five hundred years ago were only submerged river
sands and silt. Here 3700 people per square mile have acquired
homes.

The southward voyage was over a quiet sea and as we passed among and
near the off-shore islands these, as seen in Japan, appeared
destitute of vegetation other than the low herbaceous types with few
shrubs and almost no forest growth and little else that gave the
appearance of green. Captain Harrison informed me that at no time in
the year are these islands possessed of the grass-green verdure so
often seen in northern climates, and yet the islands lie in a region
of abundant summer rain, making it hard to understand why there is
not a more luxuriant growth.

Sunday morning, March 7th, passing first extensive sugar refineries,
found us entering the long, narrow and beautiful harbor of Hongkong.
Here, lying at anchor in the ten square miles of water, were five
battleships, several large ocean steamers, many coastwise vessels
and a multitude of smaller craft whose yearly tonnage is twenty to
thirty millions. But the harbor lies in the track of the terrible
East Indian typhoon and, although sheltered on the north shore of a
high island, one of these storms recently sunk nine vessels, sent
twenty-three ashore, seriously damaged twenty-one others, wrought
great destruction among the smaller craft and over a thousand dead
were recovered. Such was the destruction wrought by the September
storm of 1906.

Our steamer did not go to dock but the Nippon Yusen Kaisha's launch
transferred us to a city much resembling Seattle in possessing a
scant footing between a long sea front and high steep mountain
slopes behind. Here cliffs too steep to climb rise from the very
sidewalk and are covered with a great profusion and variety of
ferns, small bamboo, palms, vines, many flowering shrubs, all
interspersed with pine and great banyan trees that do so much toward
adding the beauty of northern landscapes to the tropical features
which reach upward until hidden in a veil of fog that hung, all of
the time we were there, over the city, over the harbor and stretched
beyond Old and New Kowloon.

Hongkong island is some eleven miles long and but two to five miles
wide, while the peak carrying the signal staff rises 1,825 feet
above the streets from which ascends the Peak tramway, where,
hanging from opposite ends of a strong cable, one car rises up the
slope and another descends every fifteen to twenty minutes,
affording communication with business houses below and homes in
beautiful surroundings and a tempered climate above. Extending along
the slopes of the mountains, too, above the city, are very excellent
roads, carefully graded, provided with concrete gutters and bridges,
along which one may travel on foot, on horseback, by ricksha or
sedan chair, but too narrow for carriages. Over one of these we
ascended along one side of Happy Valley, around its head and down
the other side. Only occasionally could we catch glimpses of the
summit through the lifting fog but the views, looking down and
across the city and beyond the harbor with its shipping, and up and
down the many ravines from via-ducts, are among the choicest and
rarest ever made accessible to the residents of any city. It was the
beginning of the migratory season for birds, and trees and shrubbery
thronged with many species.

Many of the women in Hongkong were seen engaged in such heavy manual
labor with the men as carrying crushed rock and sand, for concrete
and macadam work, up the steep street slopes long distances from the
dock, but they were neither tortured nor incapacitated by bound
feet. Like the men, they were of smaller stature than most seen at
Shanghai and closely resemble the Chinese in the United States. Both
sexes are agile, wiry and strong. Here we first saw lumber sawing in
the open streets after the manner shown in Fig. 33, where wide
boards were being cut from camphor logs. In the damp, already warm
weather the men were stripped to the waist, their limbs bare to
above the knee, and each carried a large towel for wiping away the
profuse perspiration.

It was here, too, that we first met the remarkable staging for the
erection of buildings of four and six stories, set up without saw,
hammer or nail; without injury to or waste of lumber and with the
minimum of labor in construction and removal. Poles and bamboo stems
were lashed together with overlapping ends, permitting any interval
or height to be secured without cutting or nailing, and admitting of
ready removal with absolutely no waste, all parts being capable of
repeated use unless it be some of the materials employed in tying
members. Up inclined stairways, from staging to staging, in the
erection of six-story granite buildings, mortar was being carried in
baskets swinging from bamboo poles on the shoulders of men and
women, as the cheapest hoists available in English Hongkong where
there is willing human labor and to spare.

The Singer sewing machine, manufactured in New Jersey, was seen in
many Chinese shops in Hongkong and other cities, operated by Chinese
men and women, purchased, freight prepaid, at two-thirds the retail
price in the United States. Such are the indications of profit to
manufacturers on the home sale of home-made goods while at the same
time reaping good returns from a large trade in heathen lands, after
paying the freight.

Industrial China, Korea and Japan do not observe our weekly day of
rest and during our walk around Happy Valley on Sunday afternoon,
looking down upon its terraced gardens and tiny fields, we saw men
and women busy fitting the soil for new crops, gathering vegetables
for market, feeding plants with liquid manure and even irrigating
certain crops, notwithstanding the damp, foggy, showery weather.
Turning the head of the valley, attention was drawn to a walled
enclosure and a detour down the slope brought us to a florist's
garden within which were rows of large potted foliage plants of
semi-shrubbery habit, seen in Fig. 35, trained in the form of
life-size human figures with limbs, arms and trunk provided with
highly glazed and colored porcelain feet, hands and head. These,
with many other potted plants and trees, including dwarf varieties,
are grown under out-door lattice shelters in different parts of
China, for sale to the wealthy Chinese families.

How thorough is the tillage, how efficient and painstaking the
garden fitting, and how closely the ground is crowded to its upper
limit of producing power are indicated in Fig. 36; and when one
stops and studies the detail in such gardens he expects in its
executor an orderly, careful, frugal and industrious man, getting
not a little satisfaction out of his creations however arduous his
task or prolonged his day. If he is in the garden or one meets him
at the house, clad as the nature of his duties and compensation have
determined, you may be disappointed or feel arising an unkind
judgment. But who would risk a reputation so clad and so environed?
Many were the times, during our walks in the fields and gardens
among these old, much misunderstood, misrepresented and undervalued
people, when the bond of common interest was recognized between us,
that there showed through the face the spirit which put aside both
dress and surroundings and the man stood forth who, with fortitude
and rare wisdom, is feeding the millions and who has carried through
centuries the terrible burden of taxes levied by dishonor and
needless wars. Nay, more than this, the man stood forth who has kept
alive the seeds of manhood and has nourished them into such sturdy
stock as has held the stream of progress along the best interests of
civilization in spite of the driftwood heaped upon it.

Not only are these people extremely careful and painstaking in
fitting their fields and gardens to receive the crop, but they are
even more scrupulous in their care to make everything that can
possibly serve as fertilizer for the soil, or food for the crop
being grown, do so unless there is some more remunerative service it
may render. Expense is incurred to provide such receptacles as are
seen in Fig. 37 for receiving not only the night soil of the home
and that which may be bought or otherwise procured, but in which may
be stored any other fluid which can serve as plant food. On the
right of these earthenware jars too is a pile of ashes and one of
manure. All such materials are saved and used in the most
advantageous ways to enrich the soil or to nourish the plants being
grown.

Generally the liquid manures must be diluted with water to a greater
or less extent before they are "fed", as the Chinese say, to their
plants, hence there is need of an abundant and convenient water
supply. One of these is seen in Fig. 38, where the Chinaman has
adopted the modern galvanized iron pipe to bring water from the
mountain slope of Happy Valley to his garden. By the side of this
tank are the covered pails in which the night soil was brought,
perhaps more than a mile, to be first diluted and then applied. But
the more general method for supplying water is that of leading it
along the ground in channels or ditches to a small reservoir in one
corner of a terraced field or garden, as seen in Fig. 39, where it
is held and the surplus led down from terrace to terrace, giving
each its permanent supply. At the upper right corner of the
engraving may be seen two manure receptacles and a third stands near
the reservoir. The plants on the lower terrace are water cress and
those above the same. At this time of the year, on the terraced
gardens of Happy Valley, this is one of the crops most extensively
grown.

Walking among these gardens and isolated homes, we passed a pig pen
provided with a smooth, well-laid stone floor that had just been
washed scrupulously clean, like the floor of a house. While I was
not able to learn other facts regarding this case, I have little
doubt that the washings from this floor had been carefully collected
and taken to some receptacle to serve as a plant food.

Looking backward as we left Hongkong for Canton on the cloudy
evening of March 8th, the view was wonderfully beautiful. We were
drawing away from three cities, one, electric-lighted Hongkong
rising up the steep slopes, suggesting a section of sky set with a
vast array of stars of all magnitudes up to triple Jupiters;
another, old and new Kowloon on the opposite side of the harbor; and
between these two, separated from either shore by wide reaches of
wholly unoccupied water, lay the third, a mid-strait city of
sampans, junks and coastwise craft of many kinds segregated, in
obedience to police regulation, into blocks and streets with each
setting sun, but only to scatter again with the coming morn. At
night, after a fixed hour, no one is permitted to leave shore and
cross the vacant water strip except from certain piers and with the
permission of the police, who take the number of the sampan and the
names of its occupants. Over the harbor three large search lights
were sweeping and it was curious to see the junks and other craft
suddenly burst into full blazes of light, like so many monstrous
fire-flies, to disappear and reappear as the lights came and went.
Thus is the mid-strait city lighted and policed and thus have steps
been taken to lessen the number of cases of foul play where people
have left the wharves at night for some vessel in the strait, never
to be heard from again.

Some ninety miles is the distance by water to Canton, and early the
next morning our steamer dropped anchor off the foreign settlement
of Shameen. Through the kindness of Consul-General Amos P. Wilder in
sending a telegram to the Canton Christian College, their little
steam launch met the boat and took us directly to the home of the
college on Honam Island, lying in the great delta south of the city
where sediments brought by the Si-kiang--west, Pei-kiang--north, and
Tung-kiang--east--rivers through long centuries have been building
the richest of land which, because of the density of population, are
squared up everywhere to the water's edge and appropriated as fast
as formed, and made to bring forth materials for food fuel and
raiment in vast quantities.

It was on Honam Island that we walked first among the grave lands
and came to know them as such, for Canton Christian College stands
in the midst of graves which, although very old, are not permitted
to be disturbed and the development of the campus must wait to
secure permission to remove graves, or erect its buildings in places
not the most desirable. Cattle were grazing among the graves and
with them a flock of some 250 of the brown Chinese geese, two-thirds
grown, was watched by boys, gleaning their entire living from the
grave lands and adjacent water. A mature goose sells in Canton for
$1.20, Mexican, or less than 52 cents, gold, but even then how can
the laborer whose day's wage is but ten or fifteen cents afford one
for his family? Here, too, we saw the Chinese persistent,
never-ending industry in keeping their land, their sunshine and
their rain, with themselves, busy in producing something needful.
Fields which had matured two crops of rice during the long summer,
had been laboriously, and largely by hand labor, thrown into strong
ridges as seen in Fig. 40, to permit still a third winter crop of
some vegetable to be taken from the land.

But this intensive, continuous cropping of the land spells soil
exhaustion and creates demands for maintenance and restoration of
available plant food or the adding of large quantities of something
quickly convertible into it, and so here in the fields on Honam
Island, as we had found in Happy Valley, there was abundant evidence
of the most careful attention and laborious effort devoted to plant
feeding. The boat standing in the canal in Fig. 41 had come from
Canton in the early morning with two tons of human manure and men
were busy applying it, in diluted form, to beds of leeks at the rate
of 16,000 gallons per acre, all carried on the shoulders in such
pails as stand in the foreground. The material is applied with
long-handled dippers holding a gallon, dipping it from the pails,
the men wading, with bare feet and trousers rolled above the knees,
in the water of the furrows between the beds. This is one of their
ways of "feeding the crop," and they have other methods of "manuring
the soil."

One of these we first met on Honam Island. Large amounts of canal
mud are here collected in boats and brought to the fields to be
treated and there left to drain and dry before distributing. Both
the material used to feed the crop and that used for manuring the
land are waste products, hindrances to the industry of the region,
but the Chinese make them do essential duty in maintaining its life.
The human waste must be disposed of. They return it to the soil. We
turn it into the sea. Doing so, they save for plant feeding more
than a ton of phosphorus (2712 pounds) and more than two tons of
potassium (4488 pounds) per day for each million of adult
population. The mud collects in their canals and obstructs movement.
They must be kept open. The mud is highly charged with organic
matter and would add humus to the soil if applied to the fields, at
the same time raising their level above the river and canal, giving
them better drainage; thus are they turning to use what is otherwise
waste, causing the labor which must be expended in disposal to count
in a remunerative way.

During the early morning ride to Canton Christian College and three
others which we were permitted to enjoy in the launch on the canal
and river waters, everything was again strange, fascinating and full
of human interest. The Cantonese water population was a surprise,
not so much for its numbers as for the lithe, sinewy forms, bright
eyes and cheerful faces, particularly among the women, young and
old. Nearly always one or more women, mother and daughter oftenest,
grandmother many times, wrinkled, sometimes grey, but strong, quick
and vigorous in motion, were manning the oars of junks, houseboats
and sampans. Sometimes husband and wife and many times the whole
family were seen together when the craft was both home and business
boat as well. Little children were gazing from most unexpected peek
holes, or they toddled tethered from a waist belt at the end of as
much rope as would arrest them above water, should they go
overboard. And the cat was similarly tied. Through an overhanging
latticed stern, too, hens craned their necks, longing for scenes
they could not reach. With bare heads, bare feet, in short trousers
and all dressed much alike, men, women, boys and girls showed equal
mastery of the oar. Beginning so young, day and night in the open
air on the tide-swept streams and canals, exposed to all of the
sunshine the fogs and clouds will permit, and removed from the dust
and filth of streets, it would seem that if the children survive at
all they must develop strong. The appearance of the women somehow
conveyed the impression that they were more vigorous and in better
fettle than the men.

Boats selling many kinds of steaming hot dishes were common. Among
these was rice tied in green leaf wrappers, three small packets in a
cluster suspended by a strand of some vegetable fiber, to be handed
hot from the cooker to the purchaser, some one on a passing junk or
on an in-coming or out-going boat. Another would buy hot water for a
brew of tea, while still another, and for a single cash, might be
handed a small square of cotton cloth, wrung hot from the water,
with which to wipe his face and hands and then be returned.

Perhaps nothing better measures the intensity of the maintenance
struggle here, and better indicates the minute economies practiced,
than the value of their smallest currency unit, the Cash, used in
their daily retail transactions. On our Pacific coast, where less
thought is given to little economies than perhaps anywhere else in
the world, the nickel is the smallest coin in general use, twenty to
the dollar. For the rest of the United States and in most English
speaking countries one hundred cents or half pennies measure an
equal value. In Russia 170 kopecks, in Mexico 200 centavos, in
France 250 two-centime pieces, and in Austria-Hungary 250 two-heller
coins equal the United States dollar; while in Germany 400 pfennigs,
and in India 400 pie are required for an equal value. Again 500
penni in Finland and of stotinki in Bulgaria, of centesimi in Italy
and of half cents in Holland equal our dollar; but in China the
small daily financial transactions are measured against a much
smaller unit, their Cash, 1500 to 2000 of which are required to
equal the United States dollar, their purchasing power fluctuating
daily with the price of silver.

In the Shantung province, when we inquired of the farmers the
selling prices of their crops, their replies were given like this:
"Thirty-five strings of cash for 420 catty of wheat and twelve to
fourteen strings of cash for 1000 catty of wheat straw." At this
time, according to my interpreter, the value of one string of cash
was 40 cents Mexican, from which it appears that something like 250
of these coins were threaded on a string. Twice we saw a wheelbarrow
heavily loaded with strings of cash being transported through the
streets of Shanghai, lying exposed on the frame, suggesting chains
of copper more than money. At one of the go-downs or warehouses in
Tsingtao, where freight was being transferred from a steamer, the
carriers were receiving their pay in these coin. The pay-master
stood in the doorway with half a bushel of loose cash in a grain
sack at his feet. With one hand he received the bamboo tally-sticks
from the stevedores and with the other paid the cash for service
rendered.

Reference has been made to buying hot water. In a sampan managed by
a woman and her daughter, who took us ashore, the middle section of
the boat was furnished in the manner of a tiny sitting-room, and on
the sideboard sat the complete embodiment of our fireless cookers,
keeping boiled water hot for making tea. This device and the custom
are here centuries old and throughout these countries boiled water,
as tea, is the universal drink, adopted no doubt as a preventive
measure against typhoid fever and allied diseases. Few vegetables
are eaten raw and nearly all foods are taken hot or recently cooked
if not in some way pickled or salted. Houseboat meat shops move
among the many junks on the canals. These were provided with a
compartment communicating freely with the canal water where the fish
were kept alive until sold. At the street markets too, fish are kept
alive in large tubs of water systematically aerated by the water
falling from an elevated receptacle in a thin stream. A live fish
may even be sliced before the eyes of a purchaser and the unsold
portion returned to the water. Poultry is largely retailed alive
although we saw much of it dressed and cooked to a uniform rich
brown, apparently roasted, hanging exposed in the markets of the
very narrow streets in Canton, shaded from the hot sun under awnings
admitting light overhead through translucent oyster-shell
latticework. Perhaps these fowl had been cooked in hot oil and
before serving would be similarly heated. At any rate it is
perfectly clear that among these people many very fundamental
sanitary practices are rigidly observed.

One fact which we do not fully understand is that, wherever we went,
house flies were very few. We never spent a summer with so little
annoyance from them as this one in China, Korea and Japan. It may be
that our experience was exceptional but, if so, it could not be
ascribed to the season of our visit for we have found flies so
numerous in southern Florida early in April as to make the use of
the fly brush at the table very necessary. If the scrupulous
husbanding of waste refuse so universally practiced in these
countries reduces the fly nuisance and this menace to health to the
extent which our experience suggests, here is one great gain. We
breed flies in countless millions each year, until they become an
intolerable nuisance, and then expend millions of dollars on screens
and fly poison which only ineffectually lessen the intensity and
danger of the evil.

The mechanical appliances in use on the canals and in the shops of
Canton demonstrate that the Chinese possess constructive ability of
a high order, notwithstanding so many of these are of the simplest
forms. This statement is well illustrated in the simple yet
efficient foot-power seen in Fig. 42, where a father and his two
sons are driving an irrigation pump, lifting water at the rate of
seven and a half acre-inches per ten hours, and at a cost, including
wage and food, of 36 to 45 cents, gold. Here, too, were large
stern-wheel passenger boats, capable of carrying thirty to one
hundred people, propelled by the same foot-power but laid crosswise
of the stern, the men working in long single or double lines,
depending on the size of the boat. On these the fare was one cent,
gold, for a fifteen mile journey, a rate one-thirtieth our two-cent
railway tariff. The dredging and clearing of the canals and water
channels in and about Canton is likewise accomplished with the same
foot-power, often by families living on the dredge boats. A dipper
dredge is used, constructed of strong bamboo strips woven into the
form of a sliding, two-horse road scraper, guided by a long bamboo
handle. The dredge is drawn along the bottom by a rope winding about
the projecting axle of the foot-power, propelled by three or more
people. When the dipper reaches the axle and is raised from the
water it is swung aboard, emptied and returned by means of a long
arm like the old well sweep, operated by a cord depending from the
lower end of the lever, the dipper swinging from the other. Much of
the mud so collected from the canals and channels of the city is
taken to the rice and mulberry fields, many square miles of which
occupy the surrounding country. Thus the channels are kept open, the
fields grow steadily higher above flood level, while their
productive power is maintained by the plant food and organic matter
carried in the sediment.

The mechanical principle involved in the boy's button buzz was
applied in Canton and in many other places for operating small
drills as well as in grinding and polishing appliances used in the
manufacture of ornamental ware. The drill, as used for boring metal,
is set in a straight shaft, often of bamboo, on the upper end of
which is mounted a circular weight. The drill is driven by a pair of
strings with one end attached just beneath the momentum weight and
the other fastened at the ends of a cross hand-bar, having a hole at
its center through which the shaft carrying the drill passes.
Holding the drill in position for work and turning the shaft, the
two cords are wrapped about it in such a manner that simple downward
pressure on the hand bar held in the two hands unwinds the cords and
thus revolves the drill. Relieving the pressure at the proper time
permits the momentum of the revolving weight to rewind the cords and
the next downward pressure brings the drill again into service.






IV

UP THE SI-KIANG, WEST RIVER





On the morning of March 10th we took passage on the Nanning for
Wuchow, in Kwangsi province, a journey of 220 miles up the West
river, or Sikiang. The Nanning is one of two English steamers making
regular trips between the two places, and it was the sister boat
which in the summer of 1906 was attacked by pirates on one of her
trips and all of the officers and first class passengers killed
while at dinner. The cause of this attack, it is said, or the excuse
for it, was threatened famine resulting from destructive floods
which had ruined the rice and mulberry crops of the great delta
region and had prevented the carrying of manure and bean cake as
fertilizers to the tea fields in the hill lands beyond, thus
bringing ruin to three of the great staple crops of the region. To
avoid the recurrence of such tragedies the first class quarters on
the Nanning had been separated from the rest of the ship by heavy
iron gratings thrown across the decks and over the hatchways. Armed
guards stood at the locked gateways, and swords were hanging from
posts under the awnings of the first cabin quarters, much as saw and
ax in our passenger coaches. Both British and Chinese gunboats were
patrolling the river; all Chinese passengers were searched for
concealed weapons as they came aboard, even though Government
soldiers, and all arms taken into custody until the end of the
journey. Several of the large Chinese merchant junks which were
passed, carrying valuable cargoes on the river, were armed with
small cannon and when riding by rail from Canton to Sam Shui, a
government pirate detective was in our coach.

The Sikiang is one of the great rivers of China and indeed of the
world. Its width at Wuchow at low water was nearly a mile and our
steamer anchored in twenty-four feet of water to a floating dock
made fast by huge iron chains reaching three hundred feet up the
slope to the city proper, thus providing for a rise of twenty-six
feet in the river at its flood stage during the rainy season. In a
narrow section of river where it winds through Shui Hing gorge, the
water at low stage has a depth of more than twenty-five fathoms, too
deep for anchorage, so in times of prospective fog, boats wait for
clearing weather. Fluctuations in the height of the river limit
vessels passing up to Wuchow to those drawing six and a half feet of
water during the low stage, and at high stage to those drawing
sixteen feet.

When the West river emerges from the high lands, with its burden of
silt, to join its waters with those of the North and East rivers, it
has entered a vast delta plain some eighty miles from east to west
and nearly as many from north to south, and this has been canalized,
diked, drained and converted into the most productive of fields,
bearing three or more crops each year. As we passed westward through
this delta region the broad flat fields, surrounded by dikes to
protect them against high water, were being plowed and fitted for
the coming crop of rice. In many places the dikes which checked off
the fields were planted with bananas and in the distance gave the
appearance of extensive orchards completely occupying the ground.
Except for the water and the dikes it was easy to imagine that we
were traversing one of our western prairie sections in the early
spring, at seeding time, the scattered farm villages here easily
suggested distant farmsteads; but a nearer approach to the houses
showed that the roofs and sides were thatched with rice straw and
stacks were very numerous about the buildings. Many tide gates were
set in the dikes, often with double trunks.

At times we approached near enough to the fields to see how they
were laid out. From the gates long canals, six to eight feet wide,
led back sometimes eighty or a hundred rods. Across these and at
right angles, head channels were cut and between them the fields
were plowed in long straight lands some two rods wide, separated by
water furrows. Many of the fields were bearing sugar cane standing
eight feet high. The Chinese do no sugar refining but boil the sap
until it will solidify, when it is run into cakes resembling
chocolate or our brown maple sugar. Immense quantities of sugar
cane, too, are exported to the northern provinces, in bundles
wrapped with matting or other cover, for the retail markets where it
is sold, the canes being cut in short sections and sometimes peeled,
to be eaten from the hands as a confection.

Much of the way this water-course was too broad to permit detailed
study of field conditions and crops, even with a glass. In such
sections the recent dikes often have the appearance of being built
from limestone blocks but a closer view showed them constructed from
blocks of the river silt cut and laid in walls with slightly sloping
faces. In time however the blocks weather and the dikes become
rounded earthen walls.

We passed two men in a boat, in charge of a huge flock of some
hundreds of yellow ducklings. Anchored to the bank was a large
houseboat provided with an all-around, over-hanging rim and on board
was a stack of rice straw and other things which constituted the
floating home of the ducks. Both ducks and geese are reared in this
manner in large numbers by the river population. When it is desired
to move to another feeding ground a gang plank is put ashore and the
flock come on board to remain for the night or to be landed at
another place.

About five hours journey westward in this delta plain, where the
fields lie six to ten feet above the present water stage, we reached
the mulberry district. Here the plants are cultivated in rows about
four feet apart, having the habit of small shrubs rather than of
trees, and so much resembling cotton that our first impression was
that we were in an extensive cotton district. On the lower lying
areas, surrounded by dikes, some fields were laid out in the manner
of the old Italian or English water meadows, with a shallow
irrigation furrow along the crest of the bed and much deeper
drainage ditches along the division line between them. Mulberries
were occupying the ground before the freshly cut trenches we saw
were dug, and all the surface between the rows had been evenly
overlaid with the fresh earth removed with the spade, the soil lying
in blocks essentially unbroken. In Fig. 43 may be seen the mulberry
crop on a similarly treated surface, between Canton and Samshui,
with the earth removed from the trenches laid evenly over the entire
surface between and around the plants, as it came from the spade.

At frequent intervals along the river, paths and steps were seen
leading to the water and within a distance of a quarter of a mile we
counted thirty-one men and women carrying mud in baskets on bamboo
poles swung across their shoulders, the mud being taken from just
above the water line. The disposition of this material we could not
see as it was carried beyond a rise in ground. We have little doubt
that the mulberry fields were being covered with it. It was here
that a rain set in and almost like magic the fields blossomed out
with great numbers of giant rain hats and kittysols, where people
had been unobserved before. From one o'clock until six in the
afternoon we had traveled continuously through these mulberry fields
stretching back miles from our line of travel on either hand, and
the total acreage must have been very large. But we had now nearly
reached the margin of the delta and the mulberries changed to fields
of grain, beans, peas and vegetables.

After leaving the delta region the balance of the journey to Wuchow
was through a hill country, the slopes rising steeply from near the
river bank, leaving relatively little tilled or readily tillable
land. Rising usually five hundred to a thousand feet, the sides and
summits of the rounded, soil-covered hills were generally clothed
with a short herbaceous growth and small scattering trees, oftenest
pine, four to sixteen feet high, Fig. 44 being a typical landscape
of the region.

In several sections along the course of this river there are limited
areas of intense erosion where naked gulleys of no mean magnitude
have developed but these were exceptions and we were continually
surprised at the remarkable steepness of the slopes, with convexly
rounded contours almost everywhere, well mantled with soil, devoid
of gulleys and completely covered with herbaceous growth dotted with
small trees. The absence of forest growth finds its explanation in
human influence rather than natural conditions.

Throughout the hill-land section of this mighty river the most
characteristic and persistent human features were the stacks of
brush-wood and the piles of stove wood along the banks or loaded
upon boats and barges for the market. The brush-wood was largely
made from the boughs of pine, tied into bundles and stacked like
grain. The stove wood was usually round, peeled and made from the
limbs and trunks of trees two to five inches in diameter. All this
fuel was coming to the river from the back country, sent down along
steep slides which in the distance resemble paths leading over hills
but too steep for travel. The fuel was loaded upon large barges, the
boughs in the form of stacks to shed rain but with a tunnel leading
into the house of the boat about which they were stacked, while the
wood was similarly corded about the dwelling, as seen in Fig. 44.
The wood was going to Canton and other delta cities while the pine
boughs were taken to the lime and cement kilns, many of which were
located along the river. Absolutely the whole tree, including the
roots and the needles, is saved and burned; no waste is permitted.

The up-river cargo of the Nanning was chiefly matting rush, taken on
at Canton, tied in bundles like sheaves of wheat. It is grown upon
the lower, newer delta lands by methods of culture similar to those
applied to rice, Fig. 45 showing a field as seen in Japan.

The rushes were being taken to one of the country villages on a
tributary of the Sikiang and the steamer was met by a flotilla of
junks from this village, some forty-five miles up the stream, where
the families live who do the weaving. On the return trip the
flotilla again met the steamer with a cargo of the woven matting. In
keeping record of packages transferred the Chinese use a simple and
unique method. Each carrier, with his two bundles, received a pair
of tally sticks. At the gang-plank sat a man with a tally-case
divided into twenty compartments, each of which could receive five,
but no more, tallies. As the bundles left the steamer the tallies
were placed in the tally-case until it contained one hundred, when
it was exchanged for another.

Wuchow is a city of some 65,000 inhabitants, standing back on the
higher ground, not readily visible from the steamer landing nor from
the approach on the river. On the foreground, across which stretched
the anchor chains of the dock, was living a floating population,
many in shelters less substantial than Indian wigwams, but engaged
in a great variety of work, and many water buffalo had been tied for
the night along the anchor chains. Before July much of this area
would lie beneath the flood waters of the Sikiang.

Here a ship builder was using his simple, effective bow-brace,
boring holes for the dowel pins in the planking for his ship, and
another was bending the plank to the proper curvature. The bow-brace
consisted of a bamboo stalk carrying the bit at one end and a
shoulder rest at the other. Pressing the bit to its work with the
shoulder, it was driven with the string of a long bow wrapped once
around the stalk by drawing the bow back and forth, thus rapidly and
readily revolving the bit.

The bending of the long, heavy plank, four inches thick and eight
inches wide, was more simple still, It was saturated with water and
one end raised on a support four feet above the ground. A bundle of
burning rice straw moved along the under side against the wet wood
had the effect of steaming the wood and the weight of the plank
caused it to gradually bend into the shape desired. Bamboo poles are
commonly bent or straightened in this manner to suit any need and
Fig. 46 shows a wooden fork shaped in the manner described from a
small tree having three main branches. This fork is in the hands of
my interpreter and was used by the woman standing at the right, in
turning wheat.

When the old ship builder had finished shaping his plank he sat down
on the ground for a smoke. His pipe was one joint of bamboo stem a
foot long, nearly two inches in diameter and open at one end. In the
closed end, at one side, a small hole was bored for draft. A charge
of tobacco was placed in the bottom, the lips pressed into the open
end and the pipe lighted by suction, holding a lighted match at the
small opening. To enjoy his pipe the bowl rested on the ground
between his legs. With his lips in the bowl and a long breath, he
would completely fill his lungs, retaining the smoke for a time,
then slowly expire and fill the lungs again, after an interval of
natural breathing.

On returning to Canton we went by rail, with an interpreter, to
Samshui, visiting fields along the way, and Fig. 47 is a view of one
landscape. The woman was picking roses among tidy beds of garden
vegetables. Beyond her and in front of the near building are two
rows of waste receptacles. In the center background is a large
"go-down", in function that of our cold storage warehouse and in
part that of our grain elevator for rice. In them, too, the wealthy
store their fur-lined winter garments for safe keeping. These are
numerous in this portion of China and the rank of a city is
indicated by their number. The conical hillock is a large near-by
grave mound and many others serrate the sky line on the hill beyond.

In the next landscape, Fig. 48, a crop of winter peas, trained to
canes, are growing on ridges among the stubble of the second crop of
rice, In front is one canal, the double ridge behind is another and
a third canal extends in front of the houses. Already preparations
were being made for the first crop of rice, fields were being
flooded and fertilized. One such is seen in Fig. 49, where a laborer
was engaged at the time in bringing stable manure, wading into the
water to empty the baskets.

Two crops of rice are commonly grown each year in southern China and
during the winter and early spring, grain, cabbage, rape, peas,
beans, leeks and ginger may occupy the fields as a third or even
fourth crop, making the total year's product from the land very
large; but the amount of thought, labor and fertilizers given to
securing these is even greater and beyond anything Americans will
endure. How great these efforts are will be appreciated from what is
seen in Fig. 50, representing two fields thrown into high ridges,
planted to ginger and covered with straw. All of this work is done
by hand and when the time for rice planting comes every ridge will
again be thrown down and the surface smoothed to a water level. Even
when the ridges and beds are not thrown down for the crops of rice,
the furrows and the beds will change places so that all the soil is
worked over deeply and mainly through hand labor. The statement so
often made, that these people only barely scratch the surface of
their fields with the crudest of tools is very far from the truth,
for their soils are worked deeply and often, notwithstanding the
fact that their plowing, as such, may be shallow.

Through Dr. John Blumann of the missionary hospital at Tungkun, east
from Canton, we learned that the good rice lands there a few years
ago sold at $75 to $130 per acre but that prices are rising rapidly.
The holdings of the better class of farmers there are ten to fifteen
mow--one and two-thirds to two and a half acres--upon which are
maintained families numbering six to twelve. The day's wage of a
carpenter or mason is eleven to thirteen cents of our currency, and
board is not included, but a day's ration for a laboring man is
counted worth fifteen cents, Mexican, or less than seven cents,
gold.

Fish culture is practiced in both deep and shallow basins, the deep
permanent ones renting as high as $30 gold, per acre. The shallow
basins which can be drained in the dry season are used for fish only
during the rainy period, being later drained and planted to some
crop. The permanent basins have often come to be ten or twelve feet
deep, increasing with long usage, for they are periodically drained
by pumping and the foot or two of mud which has accumulated, removed
and sold as fertilizer to planters of rice and other crops. It is a
common practice, too, among the fish growers, to fertilize the
ponds, and in case a foot path leads alongside, screens are built
over the water to provide accommodation for travelers. Fish reared
in the better fertilized ponds bring a higher price in the market.
The fertilizing of the water favors a stronger growth of food forms,
both plant and animal, upon which the fish live and they are better
nourished, making a more rapid growth, giving their flesh better
qualities, as is the case with well fed animals.

In the markets where fish are exposed for sale they are often sliced
in halves lengthwise and the cut surface smeared with fresh blood.
In talking with Dr. Blumann as to the reason for this practice he
stated that the Chinese very much object to eating meat that is old
or tainted and that he thought the treatment simply had the effect
of making the fish look fresher. I question whether this treatment
with fresh blood may not have a real antiseptic effect and very much
doubt that people so shrewd as the Chinese would be misled by such a
ruse.






V

EXTENT OF CANALIZATION AND
SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS





On the evening of March 15th we left Canton for Hongkong and the
following day embarked again on the Tosa Maru for Shanghai. Although
our steamer stood so far to sea that we were generally out of sight
of land except for some off-shore islands, the water was turbid most
of the way after we had crossed the Tropic of Cancer off the mouth
of the Han river at Swatow. Over a sea bottom measuring more than
six hundred miles northward along the coast, and perhaps fifty miles
to sea, unnumbered acre-feet of the richest soil of China are being
borne beyond the reach of her four hundred millions of people and
the children to follow them. Surely it must be one of the great
tasks of future statesmanship, education and engineering skill to
divert larger amounts of such sediments close along inshore in such
manner as to add valuable new land annually to the public domain,
not alone in China but in all countries where large resources of
this type are going to waste.

In the vast Cantonese delta plains which we had just left, in the
still more extensive ones of the Yangtse kiang to which we were now
going, and in those of the shifting Hwang ho further north,
centuries of toiling millions have executed works of almost
incalculable magnitude, fundamentally along such lines as those just
suggested. They have accomplished an enormous share of these tasks
by sheer force of body and will, building levees, digging canals,
diverting the turbid waters of streams through them and then
carrying the deposits of silt and organic growth out upon the
fields, often borne upon the shoulders of men in the manner we have
seen.

It is well nigh impossible, by word or map, to convey an adequate
idea of the magnitude of the systems of canalization and delta and
other lowland reclamation work, or of the extent of surface fitting
of fields which have been effected in China, Korea and Japan through
the many centuries, and which are still in progress. The lands so
reclaimed and fitted constitute their most enduring asset and they
support their densest populations. In one of our journeys by
houseboat on the delta canals between Shanghai and Hangchow, in
China, over a distance of 117 miles, we made a careful record of the
number and dimensions of lateral canals entering and leaving the
main one along which our boat-train was traveling. This record shows
that in 62 miles, beginning north of Kashing and extending south to
Hangchow, there entered from the west 134 and there left on the
coast side 190 canals. The average width of these canals, measured
along the water line, we estimated at 22 and 19 feet respectively on
the two sides. The height of the fields above the water level ranged
from four to twelve feet, during the April and May stage of water.
The depth of water, after we entered the Grand Canal, often exceeded
six feet and our best judgment would place the average depth of all
canals in this part of China at more than eight feet below the level
of the fields.

In Fig. 51, representing an area of 718 square miles in the region
traversed, all lines shown are canals, but scarcely more than
one-third of those present are shown on the map. Between A, where we
began our records, before reaching Kashing, and B, near the left
margin of the map, there were forty-three canals leading in from the
up-country side, instead of the eight shown, and on the coast side
there were eighty-six leading water out into the delta plain toward
the coast, instead of the twelve shown. Again, on one of our trips
by rail, from Shanghai to Nanking, we made a similar record of the
number of canals seen from the train, close along the track, and the
notes show, in a distance of 162 miles, 593 canals between Lungtan
and Nansiang. This is an average of more than three canals per mile
for this region and that between Shanghai and Hangchow.

The extent, nature and purpose of these vast systems of internal
improvement may be better realized through a study of the next two
sketch maps. The first, Fig. 52, represents an area 175 by 160
miles, of which the last illustration is the portion enclosed in the
small rectangle. On this area there are shown 2,700 miles of canals
and only about one-third of the canals shown in Fig. 51 are laid
down on this map, and according to our personal observations there
are three times as many canals as are shown on the map of which Fig.
51 represents a part. It is probable, therefore, that there exists
today in the area of Fig. 52 not less than 25,000 miles of canals.

In the next illustration, Fig. 53, an area of northeast China, 600
by 725 miles, is represented. The unshaded land area covers nearly
200,000 square miles of alluvial plain. This plain is so level that
at Ichang, nearly a thousand miles up the Yangtse, the elevation is
only 130 feet above the sea. The tide is felt on the river to beyond
Wuhu, 375 miles from the coast. During the summer the depth of water
in the Yangtse is sufficient to permit ocean vessels drawing
twenty-five feet of water to ascend six hundred miles to Hankow, and
for smaller steamers to go on to Ichang, four hundred miles further.

The location, in this vast low delta and coastal plain, of the
system of canals already described, is indicated by the two
rectangles in the south-east corner of the sketch map, Fig. 53. The
heavy barred black line extending from Hangchow in the south to
Tientsin in the north represents the Grand Canal which has a length
of more than eight hundred miles. The plain, east of this canal, as
far north as the mouth of the Hwang ho in 1852, is canalized much as
is the area shown in Fig. 52. So, too, is a large area both sides of
the present mouth of the same river in Shantung and Chihli, between
the canal and the coast. Westward, up the Yangtse valley, the
provinces of Anhwei, Kiangsi, Hunan and Hupeh have very extensive
canalized tracts, probably exceeding 28,000 square miles in area,
and Figs. 54 and 55 are two views in this more western region. Still
further west, in Szechwan province, is the Chengtu plain, thirty by
seventy miles, with what has been called "the most remarkable
irrigation system in China."

Westward beyond the limits of the sketch map, up the Hwang ho
valley, there is a reach of 125 miles of irrigated lands about
Ninghaifu, and others still farther west, at Lanchowfu and at Suchow
where the river has attained an elevation of 5,000 feet, in Kansu
province; and there is still to be named the great Canton delta
region. A conservative estimate would place the miles of canals and
leveed rivers in China, Korea and Japan equal to eight times the
number represented in Fig. 52. Fully 200,000 miles in all. Forty
canals across the United States from east to west and sixty from
north to south would not equal, in number of miles those in these
three countries today. Indeed, it is probable that this estimate is
not too large for China alone.

As adjuncts to these vast canalization works there have been
enormous amounts of embankment, dike and levee construction. More
than three hundred miles of sea wall alone exist in the area covered
by the sketch map, Fig. 52. The east bank of the Grand Canal,
between Yangchow and Hwaianfu, is itself a great levee, holding back
the waters to the west above the eastern plain, diverting them
south, into the Yangtse kiang. But it is also provided with
spillways for use in times of excessive flood, permitting waters to
discharge eastward. Such excess waters however are controlled by
another dike with canal along its west side, some forty miles to the
east, impounding the water in a series of large lakes until it may
gradually drain away. This area is seen in Fig. 53, north of the
Yangtse river.

Along the banks of the Yangtse, and for many miles along the Hwang
ho, great levees have been built, some-times in reinforcing series
of two or three at different distances back from the channel where
the stream bed is above the adjacent country, in order to prevent
widespread disaster and to limit the inundated areas in times of
unusual flood. In the province of Hupeh, where the Han river flows
through two hundred miles of low country, this stream is diked on
both sides throughout the whole distance, and in a portion of its
course the height of the levees reaches thirty feet or more. Again,
in the Canton delta region there are other hundreds of miles of sea
wall and dikes, so that the aggregate mileage of this type of
construction works in the Empire can only be measured in thousands
of miles.

In addition to the canal and levee construction works there are
numerous impounding reservoirs which are brought into requisition to
control overflow waters from the great streams. Some of these
reservoirs, like Tungting lake in Hupeh and Poyang in Hunan, have
areas of 2,000 and 1,800 square miles respectively and during the
heaviest rainy seasons each may rise through twenty to thirty feet,
Then there are other large and small lakes in the coastal plain
giving an aggregate reservoir area exceeding 13,000 square miles,
all of which are brought into service in controlling flood waters,
all of which are steadily filling with the sediments brought from
the far away uncultivable mountain slopes and which are ultimately
destined to become rich alluvial plains, doubtless to be canalized
in the manner we have seen.

There is still another phase of these vast construction works which
has been of the greatest moment in increasing the maintenance
capacity of the Empire,--the wresting from the flood waters of the
enormous volumes of silt which they carry, depositing it over the
flooded areas, in the canals and along the shores in such manner as
to add to the habitable and cultivable land. Reference has been made
to the rapid growth of Chungming island in the mouth of the Yangtse
kiang, and the million people now finding homes on the 270 square
miles of newly made land which now has its canals, as may be seen in
the upper margin of Fig. 52. The city of Shanghai, as its name
signifies, stood originally on the seashore, which has now grown
twenty miles to the northward and to the eastward. In 220 B. C. the
town of Putai in Shantung stood one-third of a mile from the sea,
but in 1730 it was forty-seven miles inland, and is forty-eight
miles from the shore today.

Sienshuiku, on the Pei ho, stood upon the seashore in 500 A. D. We
passed the city, on our way to Tientsin, eighteen miles inland. The
dotted line laid in from the coast of the Gulf of Chihli in Fig. 53
marks one historic shore line and indicates a general growth of land
eighteen miles to seaward.

Besides these actual extensions of the shore lines the centuries of
flooding of lakes and low lying lands has so filled many depressions
as to convert large areas of swamp into cultivated fields. Not only
this, but the spreading of canal mud broadcast over the encircled
fields has had two very important effects,--namely, raising the
level of the low lying fields, giving them better drainage and so
better physical condition, and adding new plant food in the form of
virgin soil of the richest type, thus contributing to the
maintenance of soil fertility, high maintenance capacity and
permanent agriculture through all the centuries.

These operations of maintenance and improvement had a very early
inception; they appear to have persisted throughout the recorded
history of the Empire and are in vogue today. Canals of the type
illustrated in Figs. 51 and 52 have been built between 1886 and
1901, both on the extensions of Chungming island and the newly
formed main land to the north, as is shown by comparison of
Stieler's atlas, revised in 1886, with the recent German survey.

Earlier than 2255 B. C., more than 4100 years ago, Emperor Yao
appointed "The Great" Yu "Superintendent of Works" and entrusted him
with the work of draining off the waters of disastrous floods and of
canalizing the rivers, and he devoted thirteen years to this work.
This great engineer is said to have written several treatises on
agriculture and drainage, and was finally called, much against his
wishes, to serve as Emperor during the last seven years of his life.

The history of the Hwang ho is one of disastrous floods and
shiftings of its course, which have occurred many times in the years
since before the time of the Great Yu, who perhaps began the works
perpetuated today. Between 1300 A. D. and 1852 the Hwang ho emptied
into the Yellow Sea south of the highlands of Shantung, but in that
year, when in unusual flood, it broke through the north levees and
finally took its present course, emptying again into the Gulf of
Chihli, some three hundred miles further north. Some of these
shiftings of course of the Hwang ho and of the Yangtse kiang are
indicated in dotted lines on the sketch map, Fig. 53, where it may
he seen that the Hwang ho during 146 years, poured its waters into
the sea as far north as Tientsin, through the mouth of the Pei ho,
four hundred miles to the northward of its mouth in 1852.

This mighty river is said to carry at low stage, past the city of
Tsinan in Shantung, no less than 4,000 cubic yards of water per
second, and three times this volume when running at flood. This is
water sufficient to inundate thirty-three square miles of level
country ten feet deep in twenty-four hours. What must be said of the
mental status of a people who for forty centuries have measured
their strength against such a Titan racing past their homes above
the level of their fields, confined only between walls of their own
construction? While they have not always succeeded in controlling
the river, they have never failed to try again. In 1877 this river
broke its banks, inundating a vast. area, bringing death to a
million people. Again, as late as 1898, fifteen hundred villages to
the northeast of Tsinan and a much larger area to the southwest of
the same city were devastated by it, and it is such events as these
which have won for the river the names "China's Sorrow," "The
Ungovernable" and "The Scourge of the Sons of Han."

The building of the Grand Canal appears to have been a comparatively
recent event in Chinese history. The middle section, between the
Yangtse and Tsingkiangpu, is said to have been constructed about the
sixth century B. C.; the southern section, between Chingkiang and
Hangchow, during the years 605 to 617 A. D.; but the northern
section, from the channel of the Hwang ho deserted in 1852, to
Tientsin, was not built until the years 1280-1283.

While this canal has been called by the Chinese Yu ho (Imperial
river), Yun ho (Transport river) or Yunliang ho (Tribute bearing
river) and while it has connected the great rivers coming down from
the far interior into a great water-transport system, this feature
of construction may have been but a by-product of the great
dominating purpose which led to the vast internal improvements in
the form of canals, dikes, levees and impounding reservoirs so
widely scattered, so fully developed and so effectively utilized.
Rather the master purpose must have been maintenance for the
increasing flood of humanity. And I am willing to grant to the Great
Yu, with his finger on the pulse of the nation, the power to project
his vision four thousand years into the future of his race and to
formulate some of the measures which might he inaugurated to grow
with the years and make certain perpetual maintenance for those to
follow.

The exhaustion of cultivated fields must always have been the most
fundamental, vital and difficult problem of all civilized people and
it appears clear that such canalization as is illustrated in Figs.
51 and 52 may have been primarily initial steps in the reclamation
of delta and overflow lands. At any rate, whether deliberately so
planned or not, the canalization of the delta and overflow plains of
China has been one of the most fundamental and fruitful measures for
the conservation of her national resources that they could have
taken, for we are convinced that this oldest nation in the world has
thus greatly augmented the extension of its coastal plains,
conserving and building out of the waste of erosion wrested from the
great streams, hundreds of square miles of the richest and most
enduring of soils, and we have little doubt that were a full and
accurate account given of human influence upon the changes in this
remarkable region during the last four thousand years it would show
that these gigantic systems of canalization have been matters of
slow, gradual growth, often initiated and always profoundly
influenced by the labors of the strong, patient, persevering,
thoughtful but ever silent husband-men in their efforts to acquire
homes and to maintain the productive power of their fields.

Nothing appears more clear than that the greatest material problem
which can engage the best thought of China today is that of
perfecting, extending and perpetuating the means for controlling her
flood waters, for better draining of her vast areas of low land, and
for utilizing the tremendous loads of silt borne by her streams more
effectively in fertilizing existing fields and in building and
reclaiming new land. With her millions of people needing homes and
anxious for work; who have done so much in land building, in
reclamation and in the maintenance of soil fertility, the government
should give serious thought to the possibility of putting large
numbers of them at work, effectively directed by the best
engineering skill. It must now be entirely practicable, with
engineering skill and mechanical appliances, to put the Hwang ho,
and other rivers of China subject to overflow, completely under
control. With the Hwang ho confined to its channel, the adjacent low
lands can be better drained by canalization and freed from the
accumulating saline deposits which are rendering them sterile.
Warping may be resorted to during the flood season to raise the
level of adjacent low-lying fields, rendering them at the same time
more fertile. Where the river is running above the adjacent plains
there is no difficulty in drawing off the turbid water by gravity,
under controlled conditions, into diked basins, and even in
compelling the river to buttress its own levees. There is certainly
great need and great opportunity for China to make still better and
more efficient her already wonderful transportation canals and those
devoted to drainage, irrigation and fertilization.

In the United States, along the same lines, now that we are
considering the development of inland waterways, the subject should
be surveyed broadly and much careful study may well be given to the
works these old people have developed and found serviceable through
so many centuries. The Mississippi is annually bearing to the sea
nearly 225,000 acre-feet of the most fertile sediment, and between
levees along a raised bed through two hundred miles of country
subject to inundation. The time is here when there should he
undertaken a systematic diversion of a large part of this fertile
soil over the swamp areas, building them into well drained,
cultivable, fertile fields provided with waterways to serve for
drainage, irrigation, fertilization and transportation. These great
areas of swamp land may thus be converted into the most productive
rice and sugar plantations to be found anywhere in the world, and
the area made capable of maintaining many millions of people as long
as the Mississippi endures, bearing its burden of fertile sediment.

But the conservation and utilization of the wastes of soil erosion,
as applied in the delta plain of China, stupendous as this work has
been, is nevertheless small when measured by the savings which
accrue from the careful and extensive fitting of fields so largely
practiced, which both lessens soil erosion and permits a large
amount of soluble and suspended matter in the run-off to be applied
to, and retained upon, the fields through their extensive systems of
irrigation. Mountainous and hilly as are the lands of Japan, 11,000
square miles of her cultivated fields in the main islands of Honshu,
Kyushu and Shikoku have been carefully graded to water level areas
bounded by narrow raised rims upon which sixteen or more inches of
run-off water, with its suspended and soluble matters, may be
applied, a large part of which is retained on the fields or utilized
by the crop, while surface erosion is almost completely prevented.
The illustrations, Figs. 11, 12 and 13 show the application of the
principle to the larger and more level fields, and in Figs. 151, 152
and 225 may be seen the practice on steep slopes.

If the total area of fields graded practically to a water level in
Japan aggregates 11,000 square miles, the total area thus surface
fitted in China must be eight or tenfold this amount. Such enormous
field erosion as is tolerated at the present time in our southern
and south Atlantic states is permitted nowhere in the Far East, so
far as we observed, not even where the topography is much steeper.
The tea orchards as we saw them on the steeper slopes, not
level-terraced, are often heavily mulched with straw which makes
erosion, even by heavy rains impossible, while the treatment retains
the rain where it falls, giving the soil opportunity to receive it
under the impulse of both capillarity and gravity, and with it the
soluble ash ingredients leached from the straw. The straw mulches we
saw used in this manner were often six to eight inches deep, thus
constituting a dressing of not less than six tons per acre, carrying
140 pounds of soluble potassium and 12 pounds of phosphorus. The
practice, therefore, gives at once a good fertilizing, the highest
conservation and utilization of rainfall, and a complete protection
against soil erosion. It is a multum in parvo treatment which
characterizes so many of the practices of these people, which have
crystallized from twenty centuries of high tension experience.

In the Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces as elsewhere in the densely
populated portions of the Far East, we found almost all of the
cultivated fields very nearly level or made so by grading. Instances
showing the type of this grading in a comparatively level country
are seen in Figs. 56 and 57. By this preliminary surface fitting of
the fields these people have reduced to the lowest possible limit
the waste of soil fertility by erosion and surface leaching. At the
same time they are able to retain upon the field, uniformly
distributed over it, the largest part of the rainfall practicable,
and to compel a much larger proportion of the necessary run off to
leave by under-drainage than would be possible otherwise, conveying
the plant food developed in the surface soil to the roots of the
crops, while they make possible a more complete absorption and
retention by the soil of the soluble plant food materials not taken
up. This same treatment also furnishes the best possible conditions
for the application of water to the fields when supplemental
irrigation would be helpful, and for the withdrawal of surplus
rainfall by surface drainage, should this be necessary.

Besides this surface fitting of fields there is a wide application
of additional methods aiming to conserve both rainfall and soil
fertility, one of which is illustrated in Fig. 58, showing one end
of a collecting reservoir. There were three of these reservoirs in
tandem, connected with each other by surface ditches and with an
adjoining canal. About the reservoir the level field is seen to be
thrown into beds with shallow furrows between the long narrow
ridges. The furrows are connected by a head drain around the margin
of the reservoir and separated from it by a narrow raised rim. Such
a reservoir may be six to ten feet deep but can be completely
drained only by pumping or by evaporation during the dry season.
Into such reservoirs the excess surface water is drained where all
suspended matter carried from the field collects and is returned,
either directly as an application of mud or as material used in
composts. In the preparation of composts, pits are dug near the
margin of the reservoir, as seen in the illustration, and into them
are thrown coarse manure and any roughage in the form of stubble or
other refuse which may be available, these materials being saturated
with the soft mud dipped from the bottom of the reservoir.

In all of the provinces where canals are abundant they also serve as
reservoirs for collecting surface washings and along their banks
great numbers of compost pits are maintained and repeatedly filled
during the season, for use on the fields as the crops are changed.
Fig. 59 shows two such pits on the bank of a canal, already filled.

In other cases, as in the Shantung province, illustrated in Fig. 60,
the surface of the field may be thrown into broad leveled lands
separated and bounded by deep and wide trenches into which the
excess water of very heavy rains may collect. As we saw them there
was no provision for draining the trenches and the water thus
collected either seeps away or evaporates, or it may be returned in
part by underflow and capillary rise to the soil from which it was
collected, or be applied directly for irrigation by pumping. In this
province the rains may often be heavy but the total fall for the
year is small, being little more than twenty-four inches hence there
is the greatest need for its conservation, and this is carefully
practiced.






VI

SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON
PEOPLE





The Tosa Maru brought us again into Shanghai March 20th, just in
time for the first letters from home. A ricksha man carried us and
our heavy valise at a smart trot from the dock to the Astor House
more than a mile, for 8.6 cents, U. S. currency, and more than the
conventional price for the service rendered. On our way we passed
several loaded carryalls of the type seen in Fig. 61, on which women
were riding for a fare one-tenth that we had paid, but at a slower
pace and with many a jolt.

The ringing chorus which came loud and clear when yet half a block
away announced that the pile drivers were still at work on the
foundation for an annex to the Astor House, and so were they on May
27th when we returned from the Shantung province, 88 days after we
saw them first, but with the task then practically completed. Had
the eighteen men labored continuously through this interval, the
cost of their services to the contractor would have been but
$205.92. With these conditions the engine-driven pile driver could
not compete. All ordinary labor here receives a low wage. In the
Chekiang province farm labor employed by the year received $30 and
board, ten years ago, but now is receiving $50. This is at the rate
of about $12.90 and $21.50, gold, materially less than there is paid
per month in the United States. At Tsingtao in the Shantung province
a missionary was paying a Chinese cook ten dollars per month, a man
for general work nine dollars per month, and the cook's wife, for
doing the mending and other family service, two dollars per month,
all living at home and feeding themselves. This service rendered for
$9.03, gold, per month covers the marketing, all care of the garden
and lawn as well as all the work in the house. Missionaries in China
find such servants reliable and satisfactory, and trust them with
the purse and the marketing for the table, finding them not only
honest but far better at a bargain and at economical selection than
themselves.

We had a soil tube made in the shops of a large English ship
building and repair firm, employing many hundred Chinese as
mechanics, using the most modern and complex machinery, and the
foreman stated that as soon as the men could understand well enough
to take orders they were even better shop hands than the average in
Scotland and England. An educated Chinese booking clerk at the
Soochow railway station in Kiangsu province was receiving a salary
of $10.75, gold, per month. We had inquired the way to the Elizabeth
Blake hospital and he volunteered to escort us and did so, the
distance being over a mile.

He would accept no compensation, and yet I was an entire stranger,
without introduction of any kind. Everywhere we went in China, the
laboring people appeared generally happy and contented if they have
something to do, and showed clearly that they were well nourished.
The industrial classes are thoroughly organized, having had their
guilds or labor unions for centuries and it is not at all uncommon
for a laborer who is known to have violated the rules of his guild
to be summarily dealt with or even to disappear without questions
being asked. In going among the people, away from the lines of
tourist travel, one gets the impression that everybody is busy or is
in the harness ready to be busy. Tramps of our hobo type have few
opportunities here and we doubt if one exists in either of these
countries. There are people physically disabled who are asking alms
and there are organized charities to help them, but in proportion to
the total population these appear to be fewer than in America or
Europe. The gathering of unfortunates and habitual beggars about
public places frequented by people of leisure and means naturally
leads tourists to a wrong judgment regarding the extent of these
social conditions. Nowhere among these densely crowded people,
either Chinese, Japanese or Korean, did we see one intoxicated, but
among Americans and Europeans many instances were observed. All
classes and both sexes use tobacco and the British-American Tobacco
Company does a business in China amounting to millions of dollars
annually.

During five months among these people we saw but two children in a
quarrel. The two little boys were having their trouble on Nanking
road, Shanghai, where, grasping each other's pigtails, they tussled
with a vengeance until the mother of one came and parted their ways.

Among the most frequent sights in the city streets are the itinerant
vendors of hot foods and confections. Stove, fuel, supplies and
appliances may all be carried on the shoulders, swinging from a
bamboo pole. The mother in Fig. 63 was quite likely thus supporting
her family and the children are seen at lunch, dressed in the blue
and white calico prints so generally worn by the young. The printing
of this calico by the very ancient, simple yet effective method we
witnessed in the farm village along the canal seen in Fig. 10. This
art, as with so many others in China, was the inheritance of the
family we saw at work, handed down to them through many generations.
The printer was standing at a rough work bench upon which a large
heavy stone in cubical form served as a weight to hold in place a
thoroughly lacquered sheet of tough cardboard in which was cut the
pattern to appear in white on the cloth. Beside the stone stood a
pot of thick paste prepared from a mixture of lime and soy bean
flour. The soy beans were being ground in one corner of the same
room by a diminutive edition of such an outfit as seen in Fig. 64.
The donkey was working in his permanent abode and whenever off duty
he halted before manger and feed. At the operator's right lay a bolt
of white cotton cloth fixed to unroll and pass under the stencil,
held stationary by the heavy weight. To print, the stencil was
raised and the cloth brought to place under it. The paste was then
deftly spread with a paddle over the surface and thus upon the cloth
beneath wherever exposed through the openings in the stencil. This
completes the printing of the pattern on one section of the bolt of
cloth. The free end of the stencil is then raised, the cloth passed
along the proper distance by hand and the stencil dropped in place
for the next application. The paste is permitted to dry upon the
cloth and when the bolt has been dipped into the blue dye the
portions protected by the paste remain white. In this simple manner
has the printing of calico been done for centuries for the garments
of millions of children. From the ceiling of the drying room in this
printery of olden times were hanging some hundreds of stencils
bearing different patterns. In our great calico mills, printing
hundreds of yards per minute, the mechanics and the chemistry differ
only in detail of application and in dispatch, not in fundamental
principle.

In almost any direction we traveled outside the city, in the
pleasant mornings when the air was still, the laying of warp for
cotton cloth could be seen, to be woven later in the country homes.
We saw this work in progress many times and in many places in the
early morning, usually along some roadside or open place, as seen in
Fig. 65, but never later in the day. When the warp is laid each will
be rolled upon its stretcher and removed to the house to be woven.

In many places in Kiangsu province batteries of the large dye pits
were seen sunk in the fields and lined with cement. These were six
to eight feet in diameter and four to five feet deep. In one case
observed there were nine pits in the set. Some of the pits were
neatly sheltered beneath live arbors, as represented in Fig. 66. But
much of this spinning, weaving, dyeing and printing of late years is
being displaced by the cheaper calicos of foreign make and most of
the dye pits we saw were not now used for this purpose, the two in
the illustration serving as manure receptacles. Our interpreter
stated however that there is a growing dissatisfaction with foreign
goods on account of their lack of durability; and we saw many cases
where the cloth dyed blue was being dried in large quantities on the
grave lands.

In another home for nearly an hour we observed a method of beating
cotton and of laying it to serve as the body for mattresses and the
coverlets for beds. This we could do without intrusion because the
home was also the work shop and opened full width directly upon the
narrow street. The heavy wooden shutters which closed the home at
night were serving as a work bench about seven feet square, laid
upon movable supports. There was barely room to work between it and
the sidewalk without impeding traffic, and on the three other sides
there was a floor space three or four feet wide. In the rear sat
grandmother and wife while in and out the four younger children were
playing. Occupying the two sides of the room were receptacles filled
with raw cotton and appliances for the work. There may have been a
kitchen and sleeping room behind but no door, as such, was visible.
The finished mattresses, carefully rolled and wrapped in paper, were
suspended from the ceiling. On the improvised work table, with its
top two feet above the floor, there had been laid in the morning
before our visit, a mass of soft white cotton more than six feet
square and fully twelve inches deep. On opposite sides of this table
the father and his son, of twelve years, each twanged the string of
their heavy bamboo bows, snapping the lint from the wads of cotton
and flinging it broadcast in an even layer over the surface of the
growing mattress, the two strings the while emitting tones pitched
far below the hum of the bumblebee. The heavy bow was steadied by a
cord secured around the body of the operator, allowing him to manage
it with one hand and to move readily around his work in a manner
different from the custom of the Japanese seen in Fig. 67. By this
means the lint was expeditiously plucked and skillfully and
uniformly laid, the twanging being effected by an appliance similar
to that used in Japan.

Repeatedly, taken in small bits from the barrel of cotton, the lint
was distributed over the entire surface with great dexterity and
uniformity, the mattress growing upward with perfectly vertical
sides, straight edges and square corners. In this manner a
thoroughly uniform texture is secured which compresses into a body
of even thickness, free from hard places.

The next step in building the mattress is even more simple and
expeditious. A basket of long bobbins of roughly spun cotton was
near the grandmother and probably her handiwork. The father took
from the wall a slender bamboo rod like a fish-pole, six feet long,
and selecting one of the spools, threaded the strand through an eye
in the small end. With the pole and spool in one hand and the free
end of the thread, passing through the eye, in the other, the father
reached the thread across the mattress to the boy who hooked his
finger over it, carrying it to one edge of the bed of cotton. While
this was doing the father had whipped the pole back to his side and
caught the thread over his own finger, bringing this down upon the
cotton opposite his son. There was thus laid a double strand, but
the pole continued whipping hack and forth across the bed, father
and son catching the threads and bringing them to place on the
cotton at the rate of forty to fifty courses per minute, and in a
very short time the entire surface of the mattress had been laid
with double strands. A heavy bamboo roller was next laid across the
strands at the middle, passed carefully to one side, back again to
the middle and then to the other edge. Another layer of threads was
then laid diagonally and this similarly pressed with the same
roller; then another diagonally the other way and finally straight
across in both directions. A similar network of strands had been
laid upon the table before spreading the cotton. Next a flat
bottomed, circular, shallow basket-like form two feet in diameter
was used to gently compress the material from twelve to six inches
in thickness. The woven threads were now turned over the edge of the
mattress on all sides and sewed down, after which, by means of two
heavy solid wooden disks eighteen inches in diameter, father and son
compressed the cotton until the thickness was reduced to three
inches. There remained the task of carefully folding and wrapping
the finished piece in oiled paper and of suspending it from the
ceiling.

On March 20th, when visiting the Boone Road and Nanking Road markets
in Shanghai, we had our first surprise regarding the extent to which
vegetables enter into the daily diet of the Chinese. We had observed
long processions of wheelbarrow men moving from the canals through
the streets carrying large loads of the green tips of rape in
bundles a foot long and five inches in diameter. These had come from
the country on boats each carrying tons of the succulent leaves and
stems. We had counted as many as fifty wheelbarrow men passing a
given point on the street in quick succession, each carrying 300 to
500 pounds of the green rape and moving so rapidly that it was not
easy to keep pace with them, as we learned in following one of the
trains during twenty minutes to its destination. During this time
not a man in the train halted or slackened his pace.

This rape is very extensively grown in the fields, the tips of the
stems cut when tender and eaten, after being boiled or steamed,
after the manner of cabbage. Very large quantities are also packed
with salt in the proportion of about twenty pounds of salt to one
hundred pounds of the rape. This, Fig. 68, and many other vegetables
are sold thus pickled and used as relishes with rice, which
invariably is cooked and served without salt or other seasoning.

Another field crop very extensively grown for human food, and partly
as a source of soil nitrogen, is closely allied to our alfalfa. This
is the Medicago astragalus, two beds of which are seen in Fig. 69.
Tender tips of the stems are gathered before the stage of blossoming
is reached and served as food after boiling or steaming. It is known
among the foreigners as Chinese "clover." The stems are also cooked
and then dried for use when the crop is out of season. When picked
very young, wealthy Chinese families pay an extra high price for the
tender shoots, sometimes as much as 20 to 28 cents, our currency,
per pound.

The markets are thronged with people making their purchases in the
early mornings, and the congested condition, with the great variety
of vegetables, makes it almost as impressive a sight as Billingsgate
fish market in London. In the following table we give a list of
vegetables observed there and the prices at which they were selling.

-----------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF VEGETABLES DISPLAYED FOR SALE IN BOONE ROAD MARKET,
   SHANGHAI, APRIL 6TH, 1900, WITH PRICES EXPRESSED
                  IN U. S. CURRENCY.--
---------------------------------------------------------
                                       Cents
   Lotus roots, per lb.                 1.60
   Bamboo sprouts, per lb.              6.40
   English cabbage, per lb.             1.33
   Olive greens, per lb.                 .67
   White greens, per lb.                 .33
   Tee Tsai, per lb.                     .53
   Chinese celery, per lb.               .67
   Chinese clover, per lb.               .58
   Chinese clover, very young, lb.     21.33
   Oblong white cabbage, per lb.        2.00
   Red beans, per lb.                   1.33
   Yellow beans, per lb.                1.87
   Peanuts, per lb.                     2.49
   Ground nuts, per lb.                 2.96
   Cucumbers, per lb.                   2.58
   Green pumpkin, per lb.               1.62
   Maize, shelled, per lb.              1.00
   Windsor beans, dry, per lb.          1.72
   French lettuce, per head              .44
   Hau Tsai, per head                    .87
   Cabbage lettuce, per head             .22
   Kale, per lb.                        1.60
   Rape, per lb.                         .23
   Portuguese water cress, basket       2.15
   Shang tsor, basket                   8.60
   Carrots, per lb.                      .97
   String beans; per lb.                1.60
   Irish potatoes, per lb.              1.60
   Red onions, per lb.                  4.96
   Long white turnips, per lb.           .44
   Flat string beans, per lb.           4.80
   Small white turnips, bunch            .44
   Onion stems, per lb.                 1.29
   Lima beans, green, shelled, lb.      6.45
   Egg plants, per lb.                  4.30
   Tomatoes, per lb.                    5.16
   Small flat turnips, per lb.           .86
   Small red beets, per lb.             1.29
   Artichokes, per lb.                  1.29
   White beans, dry, per lb.            4.80
   Radishes, per lb.                    1.29
   Garlic, per lb.                      2.15
   Kohl rabi, per lb.                   2.15
   Mint, per lb.                        4.30
   Leeks, per lb.                       2.18
   Large celery, bleached, bunch        2.10
   Sprouted peas, per lb.                .80
   Sprouted beans, per lb.               .93
   Parsnips, per lb.                    1.29
   Ginger roots, per lb.                1.60
   Water chestnuts, per lb.             1.33
   Large sweet potatoes, per lb.        1.33
   Small sweet potatoes, per lb.        1.00
   Onion sprouts, per lb.               2.13
   Spinach, per lb.                     1.00
   Fleshy stemmed lettuce, peeled,
     per lb.                            2.00
   Fleshy stemmed lettuce, unpeeled,
     per lb.                             .67
   Bean curd, per lb.                   3.93
   Shantung walnuts, per lb.            4.30
   Duck eggs, dozen                     8.34
   Hen's eggs, dozen                    7.30
   Goat's meat, per lb.                 6.45
   Pork, per lb.                        6.88
   Hens, live weight, per lb.           6.45
   Ducks, live weight, per lb.          5.59
   Cockerels, live weight, per lb.      5.59--
---------------------------------------------------------


This long list, made up chiefly of fresh vegetables displayed for
sale on one market day, is by no means complete. The record is only
such as was made in passing down one side and across one end of the
market occupying nearly one city block. Nearly everything is sold by
weight and the problem of correct weights is effectively solved by
each purchaser carrying his own scales, which he unhesitatingly uses
in the presence of the dealer. These scales are made on the pattern
of the old time steelyards but from slender rods of wood or bamboo
provided with a scale and sliding poise, the suspensions all being
made with strings.

We stood by through the purchasing of two cockerels and the
dickering over their weight. A dozen live birds were under cover in
a large, open-work basket. The customer took out the birds one by
one, examining them by touch, finally selecting two, the price being
named. These the dealer tied together by their feet and weighed
them, announcing the result; whereupon the customer checked the
statement with his own scales. An animated dialogue followed,
punctuated with many gesticulations and with the customer tossing
the birds into the basket and turning to go away while the dealer
grew more earnest. The purchaser finally turned back, and again
balancing the roosters upon his scales, called a bystander to read
the weight, and then flung them in apparent disdain at the dealer,
who caught them and placed them in the customer's basket. The storm
subsided and the dealer accepted 92c, Mexican, for the two birds.
They were good sized roosters and must have dressed more than three
pounds each, yet for the two he paid less than 40 cents in our
currency.

Bamboo sprouts are very generally used in China, Korea and Japan and
when one sees them growing they suggest giant stalks of asparagus,
some of them being three and even five inches in diameter and a foot
in height at the stage for cutting. They are shipped in large
quantities from province to province where they do not grow or when
they are out of season. Those we saw in Nagasaki referred to in Fig.
22, had come from Canton or Swatow or possibly Formosa. The form,
foliage and bloom of the bamboo give the most beautiful effects in
the landscape, especially when grouped with tree forms. They are
usually cultivated in small clumps about dwellings in places not
otherwise readily utilized, as seen in Fig. 66. Like the asparagus
bud, the bamboo sprout grows to its full height between April and
August, even when it exceeds thirty or even sixty feet in height.
The buds spring from fleshy underground stems or roots whose stored
nourishment permits this rapid growth, which in its earlier stages
may exceed twelve inches in twenty-four hours. But while the full
size of the plant is attained the first season, three or four years
are required to ripen and harden the wood sufficiently to make it
suitable for the many uses to which the stems are put. It would seem
that the time must come when some of the many forms of bamboo will
be introduced and largely grown in many parts of this country.

Lotus roots form another article of diet largely used and widely
cultivated from Canton to Tokyo. These are seen in the lower section
of Fig. 70, and the plants in bloom in Fig. 71, growing in water,
their natural habitat. The lotus is grown in permanent ponds not
readily drained for rice or other crops, and the roots are widely
shipped.

Sprouted beans and peas of many kinds and the sprouts of other
vegetables, such as onions, are very generally seen in the markets
of both China and Japan, at least during the late winter and early
spring, and are sold as foods, having different flavors and
digestive qualities, and no doubt with important advantageous
effects in nutrition.

Ginger is another. crop which is very widely and extensively
cultivated. It is generally displayed in the market in the root
form. No one thing was more generally hawked about the streets of
China than the water chestnut. This is a small corm or fleshy bulb
having the shape and size of a small onion. Boys pare them and sell
a dozen spitted together on slender sticks the length of a knitting
needle. Then there are the water caltropes, grown in the canals
producing a fruit resembling a horny nut having a shape which
suggests for them the name "buffalo-horn". Still another plant,
known as water-grass (Hydropyrum latifolium) is grown in Kiangsu
province where the land is too wet for rice. The plant has a tender
succulent crown of leaves and the peeling of the outer coarser ones
away suggests the husking of an ear of green corn. The portion eaten
is the central tender new growth, and when cooked forms a delicate
savory dish. The farmers' selling price is three to four dollars,
Mexican, per hundred catty, or $.97 to $1.29 per hundredweight, and
the return per acre is from $13 to $20.

The small number of animal products which are included in the market
list given should not be taken as indicating the proportion of
animal to vegetable foods in the dietaries of these people. It is
nevertheless true that they are vegetarians to a far higher degree
than are most western nations, and the high maintenance efficiency
of the agriculture of China, Korea and Japan is in great measure
rendered possible by the adoption of a diet so largely vegetarian.
Hopkins, in his Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture, page 234,
makes this pointed statement of fact: "1000 bushels of grain has at
least five times as much food value and will support five times as
many people as will the meat or milk that can be made from it". He
also calls attention to the results of many Rothamsted feeding
experiments with growing and fattening cattle, sheep and swine,
showing that the cattle destroyed outright, in every 100 pounds of
dry substance eaten, 57.3 pounds, this passing off into the air, as
does all of wood except the ashes, when burned in the stove; they
left in the excrements 36.5 pounds, and stored as increase but 6.2
pounds of the 100. With sheep the corresponding figures were 60.1
pounds; 31.9 pounds and 8 pounds; and with swine they were 65.7
pounds; 16.7 pounds and 17.6 pounds. But less than two-thirds of the
substance stored in the animal can become food for man and hence we
get but four pounds in one hundred of the dry substances eaten by
cattle in the form of human food; but five pounds from the sheep and
eleven pounds from swine.

In view of these relations, only recently established as scientific
facts by rigid research, it is remarkable that these very ancient
people came long ago to discard cattle as milk and meat producers;
to use sheep more for their pelts and wool than for food; while
swine are the one kind of the three classes which they did retain in
the role of middleman as transformers of coarse substances into
human food.

It is clear that in the adoption of the succulent forms of
vegetables as human food important advantages are gained. At this
stage of maturity they have a higher digestibility, thus making the
elimination of the animal less difficult. Their nitrogen content is
relatively higher and this in a measure compensates for loss of
meat. By devoting the soil to growing vegetation which man can
directly digest they have saved 60 pounds per 100 of absolute waste
by the animal, returning their own wastes to the field for the
maintenance of fertility. In using these immature forms of
vegetation so largely as food they are able to produce an immense
amount that would otherwise be impossible, for this is grown in a
shorter time, permitting the same soil to produce more crops. It is
also produced late in the fall and early in the spring when the
season is too cold and the hours of sunshine too few each day to
permit of ripening crops.






VII

THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND
TEXTILE MATERIALS





With the vast and ever increasing demands made upon materials which
are the products of cultivated fields, for food, for apparel, for
furnishings and for cordage, better soil management must grow more
important as populations multiply. With the increasing cost and
ultimate exhaustion of mineral fuel; with our timber vanishing
rapidly before the ever growing demands for lumber and paper; with
the inevitably slow growth of trees and the very limited areas which
the world can ever afford to devote to forestry, the time must
surely come when, in short period rotations, there will be grown
upon the farm materials from which to manufacture not only paper and
the substitutes for lumber, but fuels as well. The complete
utilization of every stream which reaches the sea, reinforced by the
force of the winds and the energy of the waves which may be
transformed along the coast lines, cannot fully meet the demands of
the future for power and heat; hence only in the event of science
and engineering skill becoming able to devise means for transforming
the unlimited energy of space through which we are ever whirled,
with an economy approximating that which crops now exhibit, can good
soil management be relieved of the task of meeting a portion of the
world's demand for power and heat.

When these statements were made in 1905 we did not know that for
centuries there had existed in China, Korea and Japan a density of
population such as to require the extensive cultivation of crops for
fuel and building material, as well as for fabrics, by the ordinary
methods of tillage, and hence another of the many surprises we had
was the solution these people had reached of their fuel problem and
of how to keep warm. Their solution has been direct and the simplest
possible. Dress to make fuel for warmth of body unnecessary, and
burn the coarser stems of crops, such as cannot be eaten, fed to
animals or otherwise made useful. These people still use what wood
can be grown on the untillable land within transporting distance,
and convert much wood into charcoal, making transportation over
longer distances easier. The general use of mineral fuels, such as
coal, coke, oils and gas, had been impossible to these as to every
other people until within the last one hundred years. Coal, coke,
oil and natural gas, however, have been locally used by the Chinese
from very ancient times. For more than two thousand years brine from
many deep wells in Szechwan province has been evaporated with heat
generated by the burning of natural gas from wells, conveyed through
bamboo stems to the pans and burned from iron terminals. In other
sections of the same province much brine is evaporated over coal
fires. Alexander Hosie estimates the production of salt in Szechwan
province at more than 600 million pounds annually.

Coal is here used also to some extent for warming the houses, burned
in pits sunk in the floor, the smoke escaping where it may. The same
method of heating we saw in use in the post office at Yokohama
during February. The fires were in large iron braziers more than two
feet across the top, simply set about the room, three being in
operation. Stoves for house warming are not used in dwellings in
these countries.

In both China and Japan we saw coal dust put into the form and size
of medium oranges by mixing it with a thin paste of clay. Charcoal
is similarly molded, as seen in Fig. 72, using a by-product from the
manufacture of rice syrup for cementing. In Nanking we watched with
much interest the manufacture of charcoal briquets by another
method. A Chinese workman was seated upon the earth floor of a shop.
By his side was a pile of powdered charcoal, a dish of rice syrup
by-product and a basin of the moistened charcoal powder. Between his
legs was a heavy mass of iron containing a slightly conical mold two
inches deep, two and a half inches across at the top and a heavy
iron hammer weighing several pounds. In his left hand he held a
short heavy ramming tool and with his right placed in the mold a
pinch of the moistened charcoal; then followed three well directed
blows from the hammer upon the ramming tool, compressing the charge
of moistened, sticky charcoal into a very compact layer. Another
pinch of charcoal was added and the process repeated until the mold
was filled, when the briquet was forced out.

By this simplest possible mechanism, the man, utilizing but a small
part of his available energy, was subjecting the charcoal to an
enormous pressure such as we attain only with the best hydraulic
presses, and he was using the principle of repeated small charges
recently patented and applied in our large and most efficient cotton
and hay presses, which permit much denser bales to be made than is
possible when large charges are added, and the Chinese is here, as
in a thousand other ways, thoroughly sound in his application of
mechanical principles. His output for the day was small but his
patience seemed unlimited. His arms and body, bared to the waist,
showed vigor and good feeding, while his face wore the look of
contentment.

With forty centuries of such inheritance coursing in the veins of
four hundred millions of people, in a country possessed of such
marvelous wealth of coal and water power, of forest and of
agricultural possibilities, there should be a future speedily
blossoming and ripening into all that is highest and best for such a
nation. If they will retain their economies and their industry and
use their energies to develop, direct and utilize the power in their
streams and in their coal fields along the lines which science has
now made possible to them, at the same time walking in paths of
peace and virtue, there is little worth while which may not come to
such a people.

A Shantung farmer in winter dress, Fig. 18, and the Kiangsu woman
portrayed in Fig. 73, in corresponding costume, are typical
illustrations of the manner in which food for body warmth is
minimized and of the way the heat generated in the body is
conserved. Observe his wadded and quilted frock, his trousers of
similar goods tied about the ankle, with his feet clad in multiple
socks and cloth shoes provided with thick felted soles. These types
of dress, with the wadding, quilting, belting and tying, incorporate
and confine as part of the effective material a large volume of air,
thus securing without cost, much additional warmth without
increasing the weight of the garments. Beneath these outer garments
several under pieces of different weights are worn which greatly
conserve the warmth during the coldest weather and make possible a
wide range of adjustment to suit varying changes in temperature. It
is doubtful if there could he devised a wardrobe suited to the
conditions of these people at a smaller first cost and maintenance
expense. Rev. E. A. Evans, of the China Inland Mission, for many
years residing at Sunking in Szechwan, estimated that a farmer's
wardrobe, once it was procured, could be maintained with an annual
expenditure of $2.25 of our currency, this sum procuring the
materials for both repairs and renewals.

The intense individual economy, extending to the smallest matters,
so universally practiced by these people, has sustained the massive
strength of the Mongolian nations through their long history and
this trait is seen in their handling of the fuel problem, as it is
in all other lines. In the home of Mrs. Wu, owner and manager of a
25-acre rice farm in Chekiang province, there was a masonry kang
seven by seven feet, about twenty-eight inches high, which could be
warmed in winter by building a fire within. The top was fitted for
mats to serve as couch by day and as a place upon which to spread
the bed at night. In the Shantung province we visited the home of a
prosperous farmer and here found two kangs in separate sleeping
apartments, both warmed by the waste heat from the kitchen whose
chimney flue passed horizontally under the kangs before rising
through the roof. These kangs were wide enough to spread the beds
upon, about thirty inches high, and had been constructed from brick
twelve inches square and four inches thick, made from the clay
subsoil taken from the fields and worked into a plastic mass, mixed
with chaff and short straw, dried in the sun and then laid in a
mortar of the same material. These massive kangs are thus capable of
absorbing large amounts of the waste heat from the kitchen during
the day and of imparting congenial warmth to the couches by day and
to the beds and sleeping apartments during the night. In some
Manchurian inns large compound kangs are so arranged that the guests
sleep heads together in double rows, separated only by low dividing
rails, securing the greatest economy of fuel, providing the guests
with places where they may sit upon the moderately warmed fireplace,
and spread their beds when they retire.

The economy of the chimney beds does not end with the warmth
conserved. The earth and straw brick, through the processes of
fermentation and through shrinkage, become open and porous after
three or four years of service, so that the draft is defective,
giving annoyance from smoke, which requires their renewal. But the
heat, the fermentation and the absorption of products of combustion
have together transformed the comparatively infertile subsoil into
what they regard as a valuable fertilizer and these discarded brick
are used in the preparation of compost fertilizers for the fields.
On account of this value of the discarded brick the large amount of
labor involved in removing and rebuilding the kangs is not regarded
altogether as labor lost.

Our own observations have shown that heating soils to dryness at a
temperature of 110 deg C. greatly increases the freedom with which
plant food may be recovered from them by the solvent power of water,
and the same heating doubtless improves the physical and biological
conditions of the soil as well. Nitrogen combined as ammonia, and
phosphorus, potash and lime are all carried with the smoke or soot,
mechanically in the draft and arrested upon the inner walls of the
kangs or filter into the porous brick with the smoke, and thus add
plant food directly to the soil. Soot from wood has been found to
contain, as an average, 1.36 per cent of nitrogen; .51 per cent of
phosphorus and 5.34 per cent of potassium. We practice burning straw
and corn stalks in enormous quantities, to get them easily out of
the way, thus scattering on the winds valuable plant food,
thoughtlessly and lazily wasting where these people laboriously and
religiously save. These are gains in addition to those which result
from the formation of nitrates, soluble potash and other plant foods
through fermentation. We saw many instances where these discarded
brick were being used, both in Shantung and Chihli provinces, and it
was common in walking through the streets of country villages to see
piles of them, evidently recently removed.

The fuel grown on the farms consists of the stems of all
agricultural crops which are to any extent woody, unless they can be
put to some better use. Rice straw, cotton stems pulled by the roots
after the seed has been gathered, the stems of windsor beans, those
of rape and the millets, all pulled by the roots, and many other
kinds, are brought to the market tied in bundles in the manner seen
in Figs. 74, 75 and 76. These fuels are used for domestic purposes
and for the burning of lime, brick, roofing tile and earthenware as
well as in the manufacture of oil, tea, bean-curd and many other
processes. In the home, when the meals are cooked with these light
bulky fuels, it is the duty of some one, often one of the children,
to sit on the floor and feed the fire with one hand while with the
other a bellows is worked to secure sufficient draft. The
manufacture of cotton seed oil and cotton seed cake is one of the
common family industries in China, and in one of these homes we saw
rice hulls and rice straw being used as fuel. In the large low,
one-story, tile-roofed building serving as store, warehouse, factory
and dwelling, a family of four generations were at work, the
grandfather supervising in the mill and the grandmother leading in
the home and store where the cotton seed oil was being. retailed for
22 cents per pound and the cotton seed cake at 33 cents, gold, per
hundredweight. Back of the store and living rooms, in the mill
compartment, three blindfolded water buffalo, each working a granite
mill, were crushing and grinding the cotton seed. Three other
buffalo, for relay service, were lying at rest or eating, awaiting
their turn at the ten-hour working day. Two of the mills were
horizontal granite burrs more than four feet in diameter, the upper
one revolving once with each circuit made by the cow. The third mill
was a pair of massive granite rollers, each five feet in diameter
and two feet thick, joined on a very short horizontal axle which
revolved on a circular stone plate about a vertical axis once with
each circuit of the buffalo. Two men tended the three mills. After
the cotton seed had been twice passed through the mills it was
steamed to render the oil fluid and more readily expressed. The
steamer consisted of two covered wooden hoops not unlike that seen
in Fig. 77, provided with screen bottoms, and in these the meal was
placed over openings in the top of an iron kettle of boiling water
from which the steam was forced through the charge of meal. Each
charge was weighed in a scoop balanced on the arm of a bamboo scale,
thus securing a uniform weight for the cakes.

On the ground in front of the furnace sat a boy of twelve years
steadily feeding rice chaff into the fire with his left hand at the
rate of about thirty charges per minute, while with his right hand,
and in perfect rhythm, he drew back and forth the long plunger of a
rectangular box bellows, maintaining a forced draft for the fire. At
intervals the man who was bringing fuel fed into the furnace a
bundle of rice straw, thus giving the boy's left arm a moment's
respite. When the steaming has rendered the oil sufficiently fluid
the meal is transferred, hot, to ten-inch hoops two inches deep,
made of braided bamboo strands, and is deftly tramped with the bare
feet, while hot, the operator steadying himself by a pair of hand
bars. After a stack of sixteen hoops, divided by a slight sifting of
chaff or short straw to separate the cakes, had been completed these
were taken to one of four pressmen, who were kept busy in expressing
the oil.

The presses consisted of two parallel timbers framed together, long
enough to receive the sixteen hoops on edge above a gap between
them. These cheeses of meal are subjected to an enormous pressure
secured by means of three parallel lines of wedges forced against
the follower each by an iron-bound master wedge, driven home with a
heavy beetle weighing some twenty-five or thirty pounds. The lines
of wedges were tightened in succession, the loosened line receiving
an additional wedge to take up the slack after drawing back the
master wedge, which was then driven home. To keep good the supply of
wedges which are often crushed under the pressure a second boy,
older than the one at the furnace, was working on the floor, shaping
new ones, the broken wedges and the chips going to the furnace for
fuel.

By this very simple, readily constructed and inexpensive mechanism
enormous pressures were secured and when the operator had obtained
the desired compression he lighted his pipe and sat down to smoke
until the oil ceased dripping into the pit sunk in the floor beneath
the press. In this interval the next series of cakes went to another
press and the work thus kept up during the day.

Six hundred and forty cakes was the average daily output of this
family of eight men and two boys, with their six water buffalo. The
cotton seed cakes were being sold as feed, and a near-by Chinese
dairyman was using them for his herd of forty water buffalo, seen in
Fig. 78, producing milk for the foreign trade in Shanghai. This herd
of forty cows one of which was an albino, was giving an average of
but 200 catty of milk per day, or at the rate of six and two-thirds
pounds per head! The cows have extremely small udders but the milk
is very rich, as indicated by an analysis made in the office of the
Shanghai Board of Health and obtained through the kindness of Dr.
Arthur Stanley. The milk showed a specific gravity of 1.028 and
contained 20.1 per cent total solids; 7.5 per cent fat; 4.2 per cent
milk sugar and .8 per cent ash. In the family of Rev. W. H. Hudson,
of the Southern Presbyterian Mission, Kashing, whose very gracious
hospitality we enjoyed on two different occasions, the butter made
from the milk of two of these cows, one of which, with her calf, is
seen in Fig. 79, was used on the family table. It was as white as
lard or cottolene but the texture and flavor were normal and far
better than the Danish and New Zealand products served at the
hotels.

The milk produced at the Chinese dairy in Shanghai was being sold in
bottles holding two pounds, at the rate of one dollar a bottle, or
43 cents, gold. This seems high and there may have been
misunderstanding on the part of my interpreter but his answer to my
question was that the milk was being sold at one Shanghai dollar per
bottle holding one and a half catty, which, interpreted, is the
value given above.

But fuel from the stems of cultivated plants which are in part
otherwise useful, is not sufficient to meet the needs of country and
village, notwithstanding the intense economies practiced. Large
areas of hill and mountain land are made to contribute their share,
as we have seen in the south of China, where pine boughs were being
used for firing the lime and cement kilns. At Tsingtao we saw the
pine bough fuel on the backs of mules, Fig. 80, coming from the
hills in Shantung province. Similar fuels were being used in Korea
and we have photographs of large pine bough fuel stacks, taken in
Japan at Funabashi, east from Tokyo.

The hill and mountain lands, wherever accessible to the densely
peopled plains, have long been cut over and as regularly has
afforestation been encouraged and deliberately secured even through
the transplanting of nursery stock grown expressly for that purpose.
We had read so much regarding the reckless destruction of forests in
China and Japan and had seen so few old forest trees except where
these had been protected about temples, graves or houses, that when
Rev. R. A. Haden, of the Elizabeth Blake hospital, near Soochow
insisted that the Chinese were deliberate foresters and that they
regularly grow trees for fuel, transplanting them when necessary to
secure a close and early stand, after the area had been cleared, we
were so much surprised that he generously volunteered to accompany
us westward on a two days journey into the hill country where the
practice could be seen.

A family owning a houseboat and living upon it was engaged for the
journey. This family consisted of a recently widowed father, his two
sons, newly married, and a helper. They were to transport us and
provide sleeping quarters for myself, Mr. Haden and a cook for the
consideration of $3.00, Mexican, per day and to continue the journey
through the night, leaving the day for observation in the hills.

The recent funeral had cost the father $100 and the wedding of the
two sons $50 each, while the remodeling of the houseboat to meet the
needs of the new family relations cost still another $100. To meet
these expenses it had been necessary to borrow the full amount,
$300. On $100 the father was paying 20 per cent interest; on $50 he
was compelled to pay 50 per cent interest. The balance he had
borrowed from friends without interest but with the understanding
that he would return the favor should occasion be required.

Rev. A. E. Evans informed us that it is a common practice in China
for neighbors to help one another in times of great financial
stress. This is one of the methods:

A neighbor may need 8000 cash. He prepares a feast and sends
invitations to a hundred friends. They know there has been no death
in his family and that there is no wedding, still it is understood
that he is in need of money. The feast is prepared at a small
expense. The invited guests come, each bringing eighty cash as a
present. The recipient is expected to keep a careful record of
contributing friends and to repay the sum. Another method is like
this: For some reason a man needs to borrow 20,000 cash. He proposes
to twenty of his friends that they organize a club to raise this
sum. If the friends agree each pays 1000 cash to the organizing
member. The balance of the club draw lots as to which member shall
be number two, three, four, five, etc., designating the order in
which payments shall be made. The man borrowing the money is then
under obligation to see that these payments are met in full at the
times agreed upon. Not infrequently a small rate of interest is
charged.

Rates of interest are very high in China, especially on small sums
where securities are not the best. Mr. Evans informs me that two per
cent per month is low and thirty per cent per annum is very commonly
collected. Such obligations are often never met but they do not
outlaw and may descend from father to son.

The boat cost $292.40 in U. S. currency; the yearly earning was
$107.50 to $120.40. The funeral cost $43 and $43 more was required
for the wedding of the two sons. They were receiving for the
services of six people $1.29 per day. An engagement for two weeks or
a month could have been made for materially lower rates and their
average daily earning, on the basis of three hundred days service in
the year, and the $120.40 total earning, would be only 40.13 cents,
less than seven cents each, hence their trip with us was two of
their banner days. Foreigners in Shanghai and other cities
frequently engage such houseboat service for two weeks or a month of
travel on the canals and rivers, finding it a very enjoyable as well
as inexpensive way of having a picnic outing.

On reaching the hill lands the next morning there were such scenes
as shown in Fig. 82, where the strips of tree growth, varying from
two to ten years, stretched directly up the slope, often in strong
contrast on account of the straight boundaries and different ages of
the timber. Some of these long narrow holdings were less than two
rods wide and on one of these only recently cut, up which we walked
for considerable distance, the young pine were springing up in
goodly numbers. As many as eighteen young trees were counted on a
width of six feet across the strip of thirty feet wide. On this area
everything had been recently cut clean. Even stumps and the large
roots were dug and saved for fuel.

In Fig. 83 are seen bundles of fuel from such a strip, just brought
into the village, the boughs retaining the leaves although the fuel
had been dried. The roots, too, are tied in with the limbs so that
everything is saved. On our walk to the hills we passed many people
bringing their loads of fuel swinging from carrying poles on their
shoulders. Inquiries regarding the afforestation of these strips of
hillside showed that the extensive digging necessitated by the
recovery of the roots usually caused new trees to spring up quickly
as volunteers from scattered seed and from the roots, so that
planting was not generally required. Talking with a group of people
as to where we could see some of the trees used for replanting the
hillsides, a lad of seven years was first to understand and
volunteered to conduct us to a planting. This he did and was
overjoyed on receipt of a trifle for his services. One of these
little pine nurseries is seen in Fig. 84, many being planted in
suitable places through the woods. The lad led us to two such
locations with whose whereabouts he was evidently very familiar,
although they were considerable distance from the path and far from
home. These small trees are used in filling in places where the
volunteer growth has not been sufficiently close. A strong
herbaceous growth usually springs up quickly on these newly cleared
lands and this too is cut for fuel or for use in making compost or
as green manure.

The grass which grows on the grave lands, if not fed off, is also
cut and saved for fuel. We saw several instances of this outside of
Shanghai, one where a mother with her daughter, provided with rake,
sickle, basket and bag, were gathering the dry stubble and grass of
the previous season, from the grave lands where there was less than
could be found on our closely mowed meadows. In Fig. 85 may be seen
a man who has just returned with such a load, and in his hand is the
typical rake of the Far East, made by simply bending bamboo splints,
claw-shape, and securing them as seen in the engraving.

In the Shantung province, in Chihli and in Manchuria, millet stems,
especially those of the great kaoliang or sorghum, are extensively
used for fuel and for building as well as for screens, fences and
matting. At Mukden the kaoliang was selling as fuel at $2.70 to
$3.00, Mexican, for a 100-bundle load of stalks, weighing seven
catty to the bundle. The yield per acre of kaoliang fuel amounts to
5600 pounds and the stalks are eight to twelve feet long, so that
when carried on the backs of mules or horses the animals are nearly
hidden by the load. The price paid for plant stem fuel from
agricultural crops, in different parts of China and Japan, ranged
from $1.30 to $2.85, U. S. currency, per ton. The price of
anthracite coal at Nanking was $7.76 per ton. Taking the weight of
dry oak wood at 3500 pounds per cord, the plant stem fuel, for equal
weight, was selling at $2.28 to $5.00.

Large amounts of wood are converted into charcoal in these countries
and sent to market baled in rough matting or in basketwork cases
woven from small brush and holding two to two and a half bushels.
When such wood is not converted into charcoal it is sawed into one
or two-foot lengths, split and marketed tied in bundles, as seen in
Fig. 77.

Along the Mukden-Antung railway in Manchuria fuel was also being
shipped in four-foot lengths, in the form of cordwood. In Korea
cattle were provided with a peculiar saddle for carrying wood in
four-foot sticks laid blanket-fashion over the animal, extending far
down on their sides. Thus was it brought from the hills to the
railway station. This wood, as in Manchuria, was cut from small
trees. In Korea, as in most parts of China where we visited, the
tree growth over the hills was generally scattering and thin on the
ground wherever there was not individual ownership in small
holdings. Under and among the scattering pine there were oak in many
cases, but these were always small, evidently not more than two or
three years standing, and appearing to have been repeatedly cut
back. It was in Korea that we saw so many instances of young leafy
oak boughs brought to the rice fields and used as green manure.

There was abundant evidence of periodic cutting between Mukden and
Antung in Manchuria; between Wiju and Fusan in Korea; and throughout
most of our journey in Japan; from Nagasaki to Moji and from
Shimonoseki to Yokohama. In all of these countries afforestation
takes place quickly and the cuttings on private holdings are made
once in ten, twenty or twenty-five years. When the wood is sold to
those coming for it the takers pay at the rate of 40 sen per one
horse load of forty kan, or 330 pounds, such as is seen in Fig. 87.
Director Ono, of the Akashi Experiment station, informed us that
such fuel loads in that prefecture, where the wood is cut once in
ten years, bring returns amounting to about $40 per acre for the
ten-year crop. This land was worth $40 per acre but when they are
suitable for orange groves they sell for $600 per acre. Mushroom
culture is extensively practiced under the shade of some of these
wooded areas, yielding under favorable conditions at the rate of
$100 per acre.

The forest covered area in Japan exclusive of Formosa and Karafuto,
amounts to a total of 54,196,728 acres, less than twenty millions of
which are in private holdings, the balance belonging to the state
and to the Imperial Crown.

In all of these countries there has been an extensive general use of
materials other than wood for building purposes and very many of the
substitutes for lumber are products grown on the cultivated fields.
The use of rice straw for roofing, as seen in the Hakone village,
Fig. 8, is very general throughout the rice growing districts, and
even the sides of houses may be similarly thatched, as was observed
in the Canton delta region, such a construction being warm for
winter and cool for summer. The life of these thatched roofs,
however, is short and they must be renewed as often as every three
to five years but the old straw is highly prized as fertilizer for
the fields on which it is grown, or it may serve as fuel, the ashes
only going to the fields.

Burned clay tile, especially for the cities and public buildings,
are very extensively used for roofing, clay being abundant and near
at hand. In Chihli and in Manchuria millet and sorghum stems, used
alone or plastered, as in Fig. 88, with a mud mortar, sometimes
mixed with lime, cover the roofs of vast numbers of the dwellings
outside the larger cities.

At Chiao Tou in Manchuria we saw the building of the thatched millet
roofs and the use of kaoliang stems as lumber. Rafters were set in
the usual way and covered with a layer about two inches thick of the
long kaoliang stems stripped of their leaves and tops. These were
tied together and to the rafters with twine, thus forming a sort of
matting. A layer of thin clay mortar was then spread over the
surface and well trowelled until it began to show on the under side.
Over this was applied a thatch of small millet stems bound in
bundles eight inches thick, cut square across the butts to eighteen
inches in length. They were dipped in water and laid in courses
after the manner of shingles but the butts of the stems are driven
forward to a slope which obliterates the shoulder, making the
courses invisible. In the better houses this thatching may be
plastered with earth mortar or with an earth-lime mortar, which is
less liable to wash in heavy rain.

The walls of the house we saw building were also sided with the
long, large kaoliang stems. An ordinary frame with posts and girts
about three feet apart had been erected, on sills and with plates
carrying the roof. Standing vertically against the girts and tied to
them, forming a close layer, were the kaoliang stems. These were
plastered outside and in with a layer of thin earth mortar. A
similar layer of stems, set up on the inside of the girts and
similarly plastered, formed the inner face of the wall of the house,
leaving dead air spaces between the girts.

Brick made from earth are very extensively used for house building,
chaff and short straw being used as a binding material, the brick
being simply dried in the sun, as seen in Fig. 89. A house in the
process of building, where the brick were being used, is seen in
Fig. 90. The foundation of the dwelling, it will be observed, was
laid with well-formed hard-burned brick, these being necessary to
prevent capillary moisture from the ground being drawn up and soften
the earth brick, making the wall unsafe.

Several kilns for burning brick, built of clay and earth, were
passed in our journey up the Pei ho, and stacked about them,
covering an area of more than eight hundred feet back from the river
were bundles of the kaoliang stems to serve as fuel in the kilns.

The extensive use of the unburned brick is necessitated by the
difficulty of obtaining fuel, and various methods are adopted to
reduce the number of burned brick required in construction. One of
these devices is shown in Fig. 79, where the city wall surrounding
Kashing is constructed of alternate courses of four layers of burned
brick separated by layers of simple earth concrete.

In addition to the multiple-function, farm-gown crops used for food,
fuel and building material, there is a large acreage devoted to the
growing of textile and fiber products and enormous quantities of
these are produced annually. In Japan, where some fifty millions of
people are chiefly fed on the produce of little more than 21,000
square miles of cultivated land, there was grown in 1906 more than
75,500,000 pounds of cotton, hemp, flax and China grass textile
stock, occupying 76,700 acres of the cultivated land. On 141,000
other acres there grew 115,000,000 pounds of paper mulberry and
Mitsumata, materials used in the manufacture of paper. From still
another 14,000 acres were taken 92,000,000 pounds of matting stuff,
while more than 957,000 acres were occupied by mulberry trees for
the feeding of silkworms, yielding to Japan 22,389,798 pounds of
silk. Here are more than 300,000,000 pounds of fiber and textile
stuff taken from 1860 square miles of the cultivated land, cutting
down the food producing area to 19,263 square miles and this area is
made still smaller by devoting 123,000 acres to tea, these producing
in 1906 58,900,000 pounds, worth nearly five million dollars. Nor do
these statements express the full measure of the producing power of
the 21,321 square miles of cultivated land, for, in addition to the
food and other materials named, there were also made $2,365,000
worth of braid from straw and wood shavings; $6,000,000 worth of
rice straw bags, packing cases and matting; and $1,085,000 worth of
wares from bamboo, willow and vine. As illustrating the intense home
industry of these people we may consider the fact that the 5,453,309
households of farmers in Japan produced in 1906, in their homes as
subsidiary work, $20,527,000 worth of manufactured articles. If
correspondingly exact statistical data were available from China and
Korea a similarity full utilization of cultural possibilities would
be revealed there.

This marvelous heritage of economy, industry and thrift, bred of the
stress of centuries, must not be permitted to lose virility through
contact with western wastefu

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