MODES OF PLAnting and exXTENT OF TERRACE CULTIVATION. 103

for the plough except near their bases, while, in the north, it is unnecessary to go to the expense of terracing for cultivating cotton, wheat or millet. Great labor has been expended in terracing, and many hill-sides otherwise useless are thus rendered productive; but this does not mean that every hill is cut into plats, nor that the entire face of the country is one vast garden. Terracing was probably carried much further in Palestine than it is in China.

Rice requires abundance of water, and the ingenuity of the farmer is well exhibited in the various modes he employs to insure a supply. In some places, pools are made in level fields to receive the rain from which the water is lifted by well-sweeps. It is also expeditiously raised by men each side of the pond holding a pail between them by ropes, and with a swinging motion rapidly dipping the water out of the tank and pouring it into little furrows. A more favorite plan, however, is to avail of a natural brooklet flowing down a hill-side, and conduct it from one plat to another till it has irrigated the whole. It is where such water privileges offer that the terrace cultivation is oftenest seen, especially in the neighborhood of large cities, where the demand for provisions promises the cultivator a sure reward for his labor. The appearance of a hill-side thus graduated into small ledges is beautiful; each plat is divided by a bank serving the triple purpose of fence, path, and dyke, and near which the rills glide with refreshing lapse, turning whithersoever the master willeth. Wheels of various sorts are also contrived to assist in this labor, some worked by cattle, some by human toil, and others carried round by the stream whose waters they elevate. The last are very common on the banks of the Kan kiang, where high wheels of bamboo, firmly fixed on an axle in the bank, or on pillars driven into the bed, and furnished with buckets, pursue their stately round, and pour their earnings of 250 or 300 tons a day into troughs fixed at an elevation of 20 or 30 feet above the stream. The box-trough represented in Staunton with two men turning the axle with their feet as if in a treading-mill, and since copied so often, is a more clumsy contrivance, but is much used for slight elevations; the chain of paddles runs around two axles and in the trough as closely as possible, and raises the water ten or twelve feet in an equable current. Comparatively few carts or wagons are used with animals, human strength supplying the

means of transportation; the implements of husbandry and the grain taken from the fields both being carried home on the back of the laborer. It is not an uncommon sight to see a ploughman, when he has done his work, turn his buffalo loose, and shoulder his plough, harrow, and hoe, with the harness, and carry them all home. Barrows are contrived with sails upon them in which peddlers arrange their wares, or farmers and cartmen transport their burdens.

The Chinese manure the plant rather than the ground, both in the seed and growing grain. The preparation of manure from night soil, by mixing it with earth and drying it into cakes, furnishes employment to thousands, and the transportation of their noisome loads through the narrow streets is an insufferable nuisance. Tanks are dug by the wayside, pails are placed in the

SOURCES AND PREPARATION OF MANURE.

105

streets, and retiring stalls opened among the dwellings, whose contents are carried away in boats and buckets; but it is a small compensation for this constant pollution of the sweet breath of heaven, to know that the avails are to be by and by brought to market. Besides this principal ingredient of manure vats, other substances are diligently collected, as hair from the barber's shop, exploded fire-crackers and sweepings from the streets, lime and plaster from kitchens and old buildings, soot, bones, fish and animal remains, the mud from the bottom of canals and tanks, and dung of every kind. In Chusan and the main opposite, two species of clover are grown through the winter upon ridges raised in the rice fields, and the plants pulled up in the spring and scattered over the fields, to be ploughed and harrowed into the wet soil with the stubble, their decomposition forming large quantities of ammonia to the seedlings. Vegetable rubbish is also collected and covered with turf, and then slowly burned; the residue is a rich black earth which is laid upon the seeds themselves when planted. The refuse left after expressing the oil from ground-nuts, beans, tallow, tea, and cabbage-seeds, &c., is mixed with earth and made into cakes, to be sold to the farmers.

The ripe grain is cut with bill-hooks and sickles, or pulled up by the roots; scythes and cradles are unknown. Rice straw is made into brooms and brushes, and in order to preserve it, the rice is thrashed out against the side of a tub having a curtain on one side, or bound into sheaves and carried away to be stacked. The thrashing-floors about Canton are made of a mixture of sand and lime, well pounded upon an inclined surface inclosed by a curb; a little cement added in the last coat makes it impervious to the rain; with proper care it lasts many years, and is used by all the villagers for thrashing rice, peas, mustard, turnips, and other seeds, either with unshod oxen or flails.

The cultivation of plants and grain for food forms so large a proportion of those demanding the attention of the Chinese, that except hemp, indigo, cotton, silk, and tea, those raised for manufacture are quite unimportant. The great cotton district is the basin of the Yangtsz' kiang, and the two varieties, white and yellow, grow side by side. The manure used is the mud taken from the canals, and spread dry over the ploughed fields, in which the seeds are sown broadcast about the beginning of May, and trodden into the ground by the feet. These same fields

VOL. II.

6*

frequently produce a crop of wheat during the winter, and the cotton is often sown before the wheat is harvested. While growing, cotton is carefully tended, thinned, hoed, and weeded, until the flowers begin to appear about August. As soon as the pods begin to ripen and burst, the cultivator collects them before they fall, and carries them to his house to clean the cotton of seeds and husks. The weather is carefully watched, for a dry summer or a wet autumn are alike unpropitious, and as the pods are ripening from August to October, it is not uncommon for the crop to be partially lost. The seeds are separated by a wheel turning two rollers, and the cotton sold by each farmer to merchants in the towns. Some he keeps for weaving at home, and spinning-wheels and looms are common articles of furniture in the houses of the peasantry around Shanghai.*

Hemp is cultivated in the provinces north of the Mei ling, but the plant also grows in Fuhkien; the grasscloth made from it is not so much used for common dresses as cotton and silk. There are three plants which produce a fibre made into cloth known under this name, viz. the Cannabis sativa or hemp at Canton, the Urtica nivea, a species of nettle grown about Suchau, and the Sida tiliafolia near Tientsinfu. The coloring matter used for dyeing blue is derived from two species of plants, the Polygonum tinctorium at the south, and the tien tsing or Isatis indigotica, cultivated at Shanghai and Chusan. The mulberry is sometimes raised merely as a shade and fruit tree, but the great consumption of the leaves renders its culture an important branch of labor in Chehkiang and all the eastern provinces. The tree is, by some growers, allowed to attain its natural height, by others it is cut down to increase the branches and the produce of leaves. In Chehkiang, it is cut in January, and deprived of its useless branches, leaving only the outer ones, which are trimmed into two or three points, in order to force the plant to extend itself. The trees are set out in rows twelve feet or more apart, each tree being half that distance from its neighbor, and opposite the intervals in the parallel rows; the interspaces are occupied with legumes or greens. The trees are propagated by seed and by suckers, but soon lose their vigor from being constantly stripped of leaves, and are then rooted up and replaced by new nurslings.

* Fortune's Wanderings, Chap. xiv

COTTON, MULBERRY, SUGAR, AND TALLOW TREE.

107

Sugar is grown to a great extent in the south and south-eastern provinces; the name ché, by which it is known, is an original character, which favors the opinion that the plant is indigenous in China, and the same argument is applicable to wheat, hemp, mulberry, tea, and some of the common fruits, as the plum, pear, and orange. The stalks are pressed in machines, and the juice boiled to sugar; or the cane is hawked about the streets for consumption by the people. The sugar mill consists merely of two upright cylinders, between which the cane is introduced as they turn, and the juice received into reservoirs; it is then boiled down, and sent to the refiners to undergo the necessary processes to fit it for market.

Many plants are cultivated for their oil, to be used in the arts as well as cooking; a strong oil is derived from the seeds of two or three plants belonging to the Euphorbiaceous family, for mixing with paint, smearing boats, &c. It is deleterious when taken into the system, but does not appear to injure those who use or express it. The tallow tree (Stillingia sebifera) occurs over all the eastern part of China, and when fully grown is a beautiful tree, resembling the aspen in its shape and foliage; it would form a valuable addition to the list of shade trees in this country. The seeds grow in clusters like ivy berries, and are collected in November; when ripe, the capsule divides, and falling off discovers two or three kernels covered with the pure white tallow. When the tallow is to be prepared, these are picked from the stalks and put into an open wooden cylinder with a perforated bottom, in which they are well steamed over boiling water. In ten or fifteen minutes, the tallow covering the seeds becomes soft, and they are then thrown into a stone mortar and gently beaten with mallets to detach it. The whole is then sifted on a hot sieve, by which the tallow is separated from the kernels, though containing the brown skin which envelops the latter, and presenting a dirty appearance. The tallow in this state is inclosed in a straw cylinder, or laid upon layers of straw held together by iron hoops, and subjected to pressure in a rude press from which it runs clear in a semifluid state, and soon hardens into cakes. The candles made from it become soft in hot weather, and are sometimes coated by dipping them in colored wax.*

* Fortune's Wanderings, p. 78