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r. H. KING. 



FARMERS 



FORTY CENTURIES 



PE RMANENT AGRICULTURE IN CHINA, 
KOREA AND JAPAN 

By 

F. H. KING, D. Sc. 

Formerly Professor or Agricultural Physics In the University of Wisconsin 

and 
Chief of Division of Soil f/anaoemeot, LI. S. Department of Agriculture 

Author of "The Soil"; "Irrigation and Drainage"; "Physics of 

Agriculture" and "Ventilation for Dwellings, 

Kural Schools and Stables." 



Madison, Wis. - 

MRS. F. H. KING. 

1911 

All rights ruerved 



Copyright, iqii 
By Mrs. F. H. KING 



iv Preface. 

and new, and in large acreage for every person. "We have 
really only begun to farm well. The first condi- 
tion 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 vastlj' by their experience. With the in- 
crease 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 conser^-ation 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 in- 
quiries on these themes as is suggest-ed 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. 

L. H. Bailet. 



PEEFACE 



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 pro- 
ducing 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 Prance," 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 con- 
ditions 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 



CONTENTS 



chaptee page 

ixtboductiox 1 

I. First Glimpses of Japan 14 

II. Geave Lands of China 48 

III. To Hongkong and Canton 60 

IV. Up the Si-kiang, West Riteb 81 

V. Extent of Canalization and Sckface Fitting or 

Fields 97 

VI. Some CrsTOMs of the Common People 118 

VII. The Fuel Peoblem, Building and Textile Mate- 

EIALS 137 

VIII. Teamps Afield 167 

IX. The Utilization of Waste 193 

X. In the Shantung Peovince 216 

XI. Oeientals Ceowd Both Time and Space 261 

XII. Rice Cultuee in the Oeient 271 

XIII. Silk Culture 311 

XIV. The Tea Industry 323 

XV. About Tientsin 330 

XVI. Manchueia and Koeea 345 

XVII. Return to Japan 376 

Message of China and Japan to the Woeld. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Portrait of l*rofessor King Frontispiece 

No. Page 

1. Rainy weatber costume 16 

1!. Girl on rainy-riay wooden shoes 18 

3. I'ryins? seaweed 2U 

4. Growinir seaweed 20 

5. Trellised pear oreliard in winter '22 

6. Pear trees at Akar,hi Experiment Station, .lapan 22 

7. Pears protected by paper bajrs 2.'; 

8. Street in country villa^'e. Japan 24 

9. Crowded store 25 

]0 rhinese country villase along canal 20 

tl. Japanese rice paddies 28 

12. Kice fields in Korea 2U 

13. Rice fields in Yanirtse delta. China 30 

14. Readjusted rice fields in Japan :^2 

15. Rice in paddies, crops on the dikes 33^ 

I'J. Crowded peach orchard 34 

17. Cucumbers trellised, over jrreens 36 

18. Chinese fatraer in winter dress 38 

19. Prince Ching 3!> 

20. Gardens crowded about buildings, Japan 41 

21. Vegetable vender. Japan 43 

22. Japanese vegetable market 44 

23. Terraced gardens at Naga=;akt 40 

24. C.raves in Yangtse delta, China 49 

25. Graves near Shanghai and Canton 51 

26. Graves on river bank and in garden 52 

27. (^raves in barley field 54 

28. ramily group of graves 54 

29. Toraporary burial 55 

30. Graves decorated 56 

31. <'roup of grass-grown graves 58 

32. Wheelbarrow freighters in China 5!> 

33 Sawing lumber in China 63 

34. Happy Valley 64 

35. Scene in florist's garden, Hongkong *;5 

36. Garden in Happy Valley 66 

37. Receptacles for human waste 67 

38. Water piped from mountain side to garden 6!» 

39. Terraced i^arden 71 

40. Winter gardeninsr 73 

41. Bont load of human waste 74 

42. Chinese foot-power 7J> 

43. Mulberrv Held fertilized with mud 84 

44. Fuel on the Sikiang 86 

45. Fields of ]-ice and matting rush 88 

46. Fork shaped from limbs of tree 89 

47. Landscape at Samshui. near Canton 93 

48 Winter grown peas after rice 92 

49. Fields flooded and fertilized for rice 94 

50. Fields of ginger 95- 

51. Map of canals in Chekiang province 98 

52 Map 01 2700 miles of canal lOa 



List of Illustrations. vii 

Page 

T^^^. Afap sbowinj: plain* and Grand canal 102 

".4. View anross v)ill.>y or rire fields 10'^. 

5ri. Terrarpd and flooded rice fields ]0."» 

00. Graded fields ] 11 

07. (Traded fields 134 

."H. CollecTinp rescr\oir 115 

.'11. Compost pits h.-sidH path 1 Iri 

on. TrpncIiPd fields 117 

*^il. Shaniriiai carry;* li lin 

62. Sewing circle 12u 

6;-i, Eating lunch 1 2i: 

64. Stone mill 12.'"; 

6H. Laying warp 124 

6f;. Dye pits 12.', 

CT- Whipping cotton 126 

08. Salted cahhaire 12ft 

G!*. rhinesp clover 131 

70. A'eiretable market \Z^'. 

71. Lotus pond 1.";:^, 

72. Charcoal halls i:^!t 

7-'-!. Country wonicin in \rinter dri^ss 141 

74. Boat loads of fuel 144 

7.". Cotton stem liiel 145 

76. Rice straw fu"l 1 4M 

77. Steaming tea h-ares 147 

78. r)airv herd ot water buffalo 140 

711. Water huffah. and calf luO 

80. Pine bouizh fuel l.'l 

81. Houseboat on Chinese canal l'V.\ 

82. Forest cutting on hillsides 1 .'4 

8.S. Tine and oak bough fuel 155 

84. Pine nursery ^'r>C^ 

85. Dried erass fui^l 157 

86. Kaoliang fuel 158 

87. FupI coming from the hills 100 

88. Millet-thatch and mud plast'^r IGl 

81». Air-dried earth hrirk 1-02 

ftO. House building lOo 

01. Prick kiln 104 

02. Fnrtilizing with canal mud 108 

O;-'.. Stairwnys usint in '"'arrying mud f]-om canal ]71 

04. Mulberry orchard 172 

05. Snail ^hr-lls 'n canal mud 174 

00. Chinpse incubators 178 

07. Boat load of ng^s 181 

08. Carrying compost 182 

00. Compost pit ] 8;; 

100. Comnost pit and clover 184 

101. Tomnopting 1 85 

102. Building clovpr cornoost stack 180 

lO:;. DredLTing canal mud 187 

104. Compost stack 188 

105. Fitting for ricp 192 

iOO. Manure boats in Shancrhai 195 

107. Map of Shanghai region 106 

108. Japanese cart 107 

300. F.ecepticles for human wasfp 19'1 

110. Stora^ip pits for liquid manure 200 

m. Carr.\ ing pails for liquid manure 201 

112. Applving lifjuid manure with dipper 202 

1 1 •'.. Rpsnlts 204 

1 14, Laborious grem manurinc. Japan 208 

nS. Roturning from Gevt/n lands 210 

110. Chart issued by Xara Fxperiment Station. Japan 212 

117. Compost house." Xara Experiment Station, Japan 21 j: 



viii List of Illustrations. 

118. View in Itetorestation Tract, Tsingtao, China 218 

IIM. Reforestation, Tsingtao. Cbina 219 

J20. Reforestation, Tsingtao, China 220 

121. Wild yelJow rose, Shantung, China 22J 

122. Shantung plow, China .'.!.'. 225 

123. Irrigating outrit . . . . 227 

124. Soil erosion in Shantung . . . . 229 

125. Water-earrier 2.30 

1 2G. Chinese farmyard 231 

127. Wheat in .Shantung, China 237 

12S and 129. Vehicles of forty centuries 238 

130. Wheat in hills and row s 240 

131. Seed-drill 241 

1 32. Hoeing grain 243 

138. Plastered compost stack 244 

1 34. Rome after the day's work 246 

135. Farm village street 249 

136. Stone mill 256 

137. Peanut cakes and paper demijohn 2.57 

138. Pulverized human excreta 258 

139. Fertilizing 259 

140. Foot-power pump and grain in beds 262 

141. Wheat in which cotton is planted 263 

142. Same field, wheat harvested 264 

1 43. Multiple crops 265 

144. Green manuring 266 

145. Multiple crops in Chihli, China 267 

146. Cutting wheat roots 268 

147. Compost shelter and pig pen 269 

148. Suggested conservation 273 

1 49 Rice fields In .Japan 275 

1 50. Rice fields in C hina 276 

151 . Terraced rice fields, .Japan 278 

152. Steep narrow valle.^- with rice paddies 279 

153. Egg plants between rice paddies 281 

154. Watermelons between rice paddies 282 

155. Watermelons and- taro 283 

136. Home of Mrs. Wu 284 

157. Pumping station 285 

1 5S. Pumping plant 286 

159. Nursery rice beds 287 

160. Harrow In plowed field 288 

161. Revolving wooden harrow 289 

162. Women pulling rice 290 

163. Transplanting rice in China 291 

164. Transplanting rice in rainy weather 293 

J 65. Transplanting rice In Japan 294 

166. Weeding rice 295 

107. Boat load of grass for green manure 296 

168. Applying chaff as fertilizer 297 

169. Irrigation with swinging basket 298 

170. Well swee)) and water bucket for Irrigation 299 

171. Chinese foot-power and chain pump 300 

172. Fields flooded for rice 301 

173. Japanese irrigation foot-whee! 302 

174. Pump shelter on bank of canal, China 303 

175. Current water-wheel, China 303 

176. Harvesting rice in Japan 304 

177. Curing rice 305 

178. Winnowing rice in Japan 306 

1 79. Polishing rice 307 

180. Sucking rice 808 

181. Loading rice for shipment 308 

182. Threshing barley 309 

183. Eating rice 310 



List of Illustrations. ix 

Page 

184. Preparing silkworm i?°:cs for hatching 31^ 

185. Feeding silkworms 3i;j 

186. Tending silkworms 3H 

187. Sorting cocoons ol.o 

188. Mulberr.\ oichard 316 

1S9. Mulberry tree many times pruned .'IIT 

1 90. Mulberry orchard partly pruned 318 

191. Mulberry trees on embankment 320 

192. Tea garden .ji'l 

193. Tea plantation on hillside ."'JU 

194. Picking tea in .Japan 327 

195. Weighijig fresh tea 32S 

196. Salt stacks and windmills 333 

197. Salt evaporating basins 334 

198. Chinese windmill 33-> 

199. Village on the Pel ho 337 

200. Hoeing grain 339 

201. Chinese hoe 340 

202. Harvesting wheat 341 

203. Shipniiig soy beans from Manchuria 348 

.'04. Wild' whit-»" rose 352 

205. Millet and beans 360 

206. Manchu lady 301 

207. "Swing &jy" in Korea 364 

208. Group of Koreans 363 

209. Korean women 366 

210. Korean farm houses 367 

211. Korean rice fields 369 

212. Green manuring 37o 

213 Rice ppddies in mountain valle^' 371 

214. Eroding hillside. Korea 372 

215. Swinging scoop for irrigation 373 

216. Green manuring 380 

217. Fukuoka Experiment Station 381 

218. Fukuoka Experiment Station 382 

219. Fukuoka Experiment Station 38S 

220. Fukuoka Experiment Station 384 

221. Japanese plows 386 

222. Test rice plats at Fnkuoka ?:xperiment Station 387 

223. Public highway in .Japan 388 

224. Taking wood to market, .lapan 389 

225. Terraced valley in .Japan 390 

226. Group of houses among rice paddies 391 

227. Fields of matting rush 393 

228. Japanese girls playing flower cards 394 

229. Well furnished Japanese room 304 

230. Fertilizing rice with old stubble 398 

231. Irrigating with foot-power water wheel 309 

232. Beauty at home in Japan 401 

233. Old cherry tree 402 

234. Admiring cherry blossoms 403 

235. Entrance to Kiyomizn temple, Kyoto 404 

236. Klyomir':u temple and wooded slope 406 

237. Seats in temple park 407 

238. Iris garden. Japan 408 

239. Street flower vender, Japan 409 

240. Field of indigo, Japan 411 

241. Water wheel In Japan 412 

242. . Shlznoka Experiment Station 416 

243 Japanese ladles 418 

244. Landscapes in Tokyo plain 420 

245. Straw mulching 421 

246. Soil study fleld. Imperial Agr. Experiment Station, Tokyo... 423 
■^47 Eaulpmcnt for soil studies, Imperial Agr. Experiment Station, 

Tokyo 426 

248 Toll may not cease 43] 



INTRODUCTION. 



A word of introdiK'tion 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 charac- 
terize, dominate and determine the agricultural and other 
industrial operations of western nations were physical im- 
possibilities 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 prac- 
tices are to be considered are toiling in fields tilled more 
than three thousand years and who have barely one acre 
per capita, more than one-half of which is uncultivable 
mountain land. 

Again, the great movement of cargoes of feeding stuffs 
and mineral fertilizers to western Europe and to the east- 
ern 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 indefi- 
nitely in either Europe or America. These importations 
are for the time making tolerable the waste of plant food 
materials through our modem systems of sewage disposal 
and other faulty practices; but the Mongolian races have 
held all such wastes, both urban and rural, and manj' 
others which we ignore, sacred to agriculture, applying 
them to their fields. 



2 Introduction. 

We are to consider some of the practices of a virile race 
of some five hundred millions of people who have an unim- 
paired inheritance moving with the momentum acquired 
through four thousand years ; a people morally and intel- 
lectually strong, mechanically capable, who are awakening 
to a utilization of all the possibilities which science and in- 
vention during recent years have brought to western na- 
tions; 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 pro- 
duce sufficiently for the maintenance of such dense popu- 
lations 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 magni- 
tude 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 popu- 
lation 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 ex- 
ceeded 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 popula- 
tion in 1905 was, on this basis, less than one-third that of 
Japan in her three main islands. At the same time Japan 



Density of Population. 3 

is feeding 69 horses and 56 cattle, nearly all laboring ani- 
mals, 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 main- 
tained, 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 popula- 
tion equal to 3,072 people, 256 donkeys, 256 cattle and 512 
swine per square mile. In another instance where the hold- 
ing was one and two-thirds acres the farmer had 10 in his 
family and was maintaining one donkey and one pig, giv- 
ing to this farm land a maintenance capacitj' of 3,840 peo- 
ple. 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 



4 Introduction. 

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 popu- 
lations. 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 indus- 
trial, educational and social importance to all nations if 
there might be brought to them a full and accurate account 
of all those conditions wdiich 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 throvigh which this evolu- 
tion has passed are irrevocably buried in the past but such 
remarkable maintenance efficiency attained centuries ago 
and projected into the present with little apparent decad- 
ence merits the most profound study and the time is fully 
ripe when it should be made. Living fis we are in the 
morning of a century of transition from isolated to cosmo- 
politan national life when profound readjustments, indus- 
trial, educational and social, must result, such an investi- 
gation 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 be- 
come available to all concerned, made so in the spirit that 
each should become coordinate and mutually helpful com- 
ponent factors in the world's progress. 



Xeid of Mutual Understanding. 5 

One very appropriate and immensely helpful means for 
attacking this problem, and which should prove mutually 
helpful to citizen and state, v?ould be for the higher edu- 
cational 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, organ- 
izing therefrom investigating bodies each containing com- 
ponents 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 mainte- 
nance might well be met by diverting so much as is need- 
ful 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 to- 
gether and of a square deal rather than one of holding 
aloof and of stri"\ang to gain unneighborly advantage. 

JIany factors and conditions conspire to give to the 
farms and farmers of the Far East their high maintenance 
efSciency and some of these may be succinctly stated. The 
portions of China, Korea and Japan where dense popula- 
tions have developed and are being maintained occupy ex- 
ceptionally 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 
Lorth 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 



6 Introduction. 

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 pea- 
nuts. At Tientsin, 39° 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, chieflj' 
upon the products of an area smaller than the improved 
farm lands of the United States. Complete a sqiiare on the 
lines drawn from Chicago southward to the Gulf and west- 
ward 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 win- 
ter, while in our southern stites the rainfall is nearer 60 
inches with less than one-half of it between June and Sep- 
tember. Along a line drawn from Lake Superior through 
central Texas the yearly precipitation is about 30 inches 



Rainfall and Crops 7 

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 Jxdy 
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 maturitj', 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 es- 
sentials and principles which may well cause western na- 
tions 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-oflE from adjacent 
uncultivable mountain country. Wlierever 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, cen- 
turies 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 fertili- 



8 Introduction. 

zation 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 conserva- 
tive 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 an- 
nual 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 uni- 
versal 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 se- 
cure maximum returns in seasons of drought and where 
the rainfall is small. The millets thrive in the hot sum- 
mer 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 irriga- 
tion 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 coun- 
tries the soils are naturally more than ordinarily deep, in- 
herently fertile and enduring, judicious and rational meth- 



Fertilization. 9 

ods of fertilization are everywhere practiced ; but not until 
recent years, and onlj- in Japan, have mineral commercial 
fertilizers been used. For centuries, however, all cultiva- 
ted lands, including adjacent hill and mountain sides, 
the canals, streams and the sea have been made to con- 
tribute what they could toward the fertilization of cul- 
tivated 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 nianure 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 be- 
tween 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 ap- 
plied to the fields in a manner which secures an efBciency 
far above our own practices. Statistics obtained through 
the Bureau of Agriculture, Japan, place the amount of 
human waste in that countrj' in 1908 at 23,950,295 tons, 
or 1.75 tons per acre of her cultivated land. The Inter- 
national 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 



10 Introduction. 

the commercial fertilizers purchased. Between Shanhai- 
kwan 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 j^ears, generaled by the best scientists 
of all Europe, that it was finally conceded as demonstrated 
that leguminous plants acting as hosts for lower organisms 
fiving on their roots are largely responsible for the mainte- 
nance 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 s& 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 har- 
vested, fields are often sowed to "clover" {Astragalus 
sinicus) which is allowed to grow until near the next trans- 
planting 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 ap- 
plied to the field. And so it is literalh' true that these old 
world farmers whom we regard as ignorant, perhaps be- 
cause they do not ride sulky plows as we do, have long in- 
cluded 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 be- 
yond 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 



Methods of Culture. 11 

hurry. This is quite true and made possible for the rea- 
son 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 al- 
though 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 enor- 
mous 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 heavj^ fertilization, and by 
supplemental irrigation when needful, the soil is made to 
do full duty throvighout 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 prepar- 
ing 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 throusrh more than 4000 years, ex- 
panding until a million-dollar cargo of the product has 



12 Introduction. 

been laid down on our western coast and rushed by special 
fast express to the east 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, rep- 
resenting a total value of perhaps $700,000,000, quite equal- 
ling in value the wheat crop of the United States, but pro- 
duced 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 some- 
thing to render boiled water palatable for drinking pur- 
poses. The drinking of boiled water is universally adopted 
in these countries as an individuallj^ available and thor- 
oughly efficient safeguard against that class of deadly 
disease germs which thus far it has been impossible to ex- 
elude 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 considera- 
tion the inherent difficulties which must increase enor- 
mously with increasing populations, it appears inevitable 
that modern methods must ultimately fail in sanitary effi- 
ciency and that absolute safety can be secured only in 
some manner having the equivalent effect of boiling drink- 
ing 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 an- 
nual export must exceed 200,000,000 pounds with a total 
annual output more than double this amount of cured tea. 



Economy and Industry. 13 

But above any other factor, and perhaps greater than 
all of them combined in contributing to the high mainte- 
nance 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. What- 
ever 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 patientlj' labored with through one, 
three or even six months, to bring them into the most effi- 
cient form to serve as manure for the soil or as feed for 
the crop. It seems to be a golden rule with these indus- 
trial 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 daj' nor the hottest sunshine shall be permitted to 
cancel the obligation or defer its execution. 



I. 

FIEST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN. 



We left the United States from Seattle for Shanghai, 
China, sailing by the northern route, at one P. M. Febru- 
ary second, reaching Yokohama February 19th and Shang- 
hai, March 1st. It was our aim throughout the journey 
to beep in close contact with the field and crop problems 
and to converse personally, through interpreters or other- 
wise, with the farmers, gardeners and fruit growers them- 
selves ; 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 meth- 
ods 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 bril- 
liant emerald such as Ireland's hills in June fling in un- 
paralleled 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 cov- 
ered with deep soil, neither cultivated nor suffering from 
serious erosion, yet surrounded by favorable climatic con- 
ditions, was our first great surprise. 



Landing in Japan. 15 

To the southward around the point, after turning north- 
ward 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 Presi- 
dent 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 oppor- 
tunities 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 oppor- 
tunity 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 .iinricksha 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 



16 



First Glimpses of Japan. 




Rainy-daj/ SJioes. IT 

with everything outside the car so strange and different 
from home that the sliock 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 vras 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 every- 
body 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 dip- 
ped 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 tlie 

2 



18 



First Glimpses of Japan. 



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, 




Fig. U. — Girl on rainy-diiy wooden shoes, rnrryinp :ind eutertaining child 
in the ^':iy most common in Japan. 



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 out- 
fit. Two dollars and thirty-four cents per day covered 
fuel, superintendence and repairs. There was almost no 



Xight Soil. 19 

capital invested in machinery. Men were plenty and to 
spare. Rice was the fuel, cooked without salt, boiled stiff, 
reenforced with a bit 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 Yoko- 
hama to Tok>'o, 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 eontainer^lholding forty, sixty or more pounds 
each. Strange as it may seem, there are not today and ap- 
parently 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 mone.y. " 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 trav- 
eler to stop, primarily for profit to the owner, more than 
for personal convenience. 

Between Yokohama and Tokj^o, 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 



20 



First Glimpses of Japan. 



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Fig. 3. — ^Method of drying seaweed used for foodjfjpThe small black squart^s 
on the larger light ones are the seaweed. The skewers seen pin the squares 
of matting against the long screens, six of which are shown in parallel 
series. 





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Fig. 4. — Section of shallow sea bottom planted to brnshwnod on which the 
edible seaweeds attach themselves and grow. 



Drying i^cainid. 21 

screens, set in pai'allel series of five to ten or more in num- 
ber and several liundred feet long, were used for the pur- 
prse of drying varieties of delicate seaweed, these being 
spread out in tlie manner shown in Fig. ?>. 

The seaweed is first spread upon separate ten by twelve 
inch straw mats, forming a thin layer seven liy eight inches. 
These mats are held by means of wooden skewers forced 
through the bod.y 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 lim))s the seaweeds become at- 
tached, grow to matui'itv 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 wliolly 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- 
liead trellises at a bight under which a man can readily 
walk erect and easily reacli the fruit witli the hand while 
standing upon the ground. Pear orchards thus form ar- 
bors 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 de- 
sired. As a result the ground beneath is completely shaded 
and every pear is within reach, which is a great con- 
venience when it becomes desirable to protect the fruit 



22 



First Glimpsen of Japan. 





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Pig. r>. — Looking dowQ upon an extensive pear orchard wliose limbs are 
trained liorizontally, forming an arbor completely stiading tl:ie ground 
when in leaf, and placing all of the fruit within reach of the hand from 
beneath. 




Fig. 6.— Pear trees at Akashi Experiment Station, Japan. Pears protected 
by paper bags. Special form of pruning advised by Prof, One, standing 
on the left, with Prof. Tokito, The trees branch below rather than at the 
level of the trellis. 



Pear Orchards. 



23 



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 par- 
allel as when harvested. 




Fig. 



-Low brandling pear orchard with pears protected by paper bags, at 
Akashi Experiment Station. Japan. 



To one from a countrj' 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, 



2-t 



First Glimpsfs of Japiu. 




A Crowded Land. 



25 



gravestones almost tnuehing aud markers for families liter- 
ally in bundles at a grave, while round about there may 
be no free eountry whatever, dwellings, gardens or rice 
paddies eontesting the liny allotted aieas too closely to 
leave even foot-paths heiween. 

Unless recently moaitieu thrcugli fureign infiueuce the 
streets of villages and cities are naircw, as seen in Fig. 8, 
where however the street is unusually liroad. This is a 
village in the Hakone district on a Icautiful lake of the 
same name, where stands an Imperial summer palace, seen 
near the center cf the view cu a hill across the lake. The 
roofs of the houses here are typic-al of the neat, careful 
thatching with rice straw, vei-y generally adopted in place 
of tile for the country villages thi'oughout much of Japan. 
The shops and stores, open full width directly upon the 
street, are filled to overtiowi]ig, as seen in ¥ig. 9 and in 
Fw:. -22. 




Fig. 9.— Small store full to overflowing; entire front opening flush with the 

street. 



26 



First Glimpses of Japan. 




Crowding of liural Sections. 27 

In the canalized regions of Cliina 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 tliree lines of houses, 
lived no less than 240 families and more tliaii 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, look- 
ing 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 b.v 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, thej' may even be widely scattered and very 
often rented. 

The people generally live in villages, going often consid- 
erable distances to their work. Recognizing the great disad- 
vantage of scattered holdings broken into such small areas, 
the Japanese Govprnment has passed laws for the adjust- 



28 



F'irst Glimpses of Jap'.in. 




o 
I 



Korean Eice Fields. 



29 




30 



First Glimpses of Japan. 




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6=0 



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OS 






Is 



Roads and Readjusted Fields. 31 

ment of farm lands which have been in force since 1900. 
It provides for the exchange of lands ; for changing boun- 
daries : 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 train- 
ing of men to the higher agricultural school belonging to 
the Dai Nippon Agricultural Association and since 1906 
the Agricultural College and the Kogyokusha have under- 
taken 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 im- 
prove 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 seiTe 
the farms and villages. Each of the three S3^stems 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 j^ear by a specially 
appointed crew, as is the practice in railroad maintenance. 
The result is, Japan has roads maintained in excellent con- 
dition, 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 coun- 
tries 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 
ver\' slightest rise of groiind, not a foot above the water 
all around, which could better be left in grading the pad- 
dies to proper level. 



32 



First Gliinpscs of Japan. 




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Rice, Beans and Pears. 



33 







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^^^^^^^^^^E? 






^^H^l'i 


'b^ ''- ■*"■■ ■'i;f--;'.<- :•; 


^^^Bs%i 






mm. 


-.--■*lV-*s-^; ,t 




II |l^ ' T^.:i> 


^^^^^K'^ 





34 



First Glimpses of Japa}t. 




Croirdiufi of Cropx. 35 

How closely the ground itself may be crowded with 
plants is seen in Fig. 16, where a young peacii 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 crnps ;ind 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 



36 



First Glimpses of Japun. 







('roirdiitfj of Crops. 37 

winter dress which is the embodiment of conservation, 
retaining the tires 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 cen- 
turies, 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 
uioved with the promptness of a railway train. On reach- 
ing Kobe we transferred to the Yamaguchi ilaru which 
sailed the following morning, to shorten the time of reach- 
ing Shanghai. This left but an afternoon for a trip into 
the countrjf 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 carry- 
ing a winter crop. And Fig. 20 shows how closely the 
crops crowd the houses and shops. Here were \ery 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 entire- 
ly devoted to English violets just coming into full bloom. 
The.v 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 
cheeked the loss of heat absorbed by the soil. 

The voyage from Kobe to Jloji was made between 10 
in the morning, February 24th. and 5 :.30 P. ^L of February 



38 



Fir.si Glim-pse.s of Japrjii. 




Fig. 18.— Aged Chinese farmer in winter dress, who leads 
in the maintenance of his nation. 



^yiu^l )• Dnss. 



39 




Copyright, by Underwood & Vni]ey's\oo(i, N. Y. 

Fig. 19.— Prince Ching, also in winter dress. 



i*^' First Glimpses of Japan. 

25th over a quiet sea with an enjoyable ride. Being fog- 
lionnd during the night gave us the whole of Japan's 
beautiful Inland Sea, enchanting I)cyond 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 steve- 
dores 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 illumina- 
tion sugerested 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, bend- 
ing 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 hitman chains, in service the prototype of our 
modem 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, emptving the buckets down the chute, was a 



Gnr(lc)i^ in Fcbnun-y. 



4] 




i2 First Glimpses of Japan. 

mother with her two-year-old child in the sling en Iht 
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 com- 



Marlcciing Vegetables. 



4'A 




u 



First Glimpses of Japan. 










Terraced Gardens. i-j 

ing down from the terraced gardens to the markets. We 
passed loads of green l)amboo poles just cut, three inclies 
in diameter at the butt and twenty feet long, drawn nn 
carts. Both men and women were carrying young children 
and older ones were playing and singing in the street. Ver\- 
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 coiirts of any size separating them frim the 
market or shop. The opportunity which the oriental house- 
wife may have in the choice of vegetables en going to the 
market, and the attractive manner of displaying such prod- 
ucts in Japan, are seen in Fig. 22. 

We finallv reached one of the terraced liillsides 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 hight. One of these hillside slopes is seen 
in Fig. 23. These terraced gardens are both short and 
narrow and most of them bounded bv stone walls on three 
sides, suggesting house foundations, the two end walls slop- 
ing down the hill from the hight of the back terrace, dr"^!!- 
ping to the ground level in froiit, these forminor foot-paths 
leading up the slope occasionallv with one, two or three 
steps in places. 

Each terrace sloped slightlv down the hill ?t a small 
anffle and had a low ridge along the front. Around its 
entire border a narrow drain or furrow was rrraneed to 
collect surface water and direct it to drainaore channels or 
into a catch basin where it micht be put back en the srarden 
or be used in preparing liauid fertilizer. At one corner 
of manv of these small terraced srarders were cement lined 
pits, used bo+b as catch basins for water and as recentacles 



46 



First Glimpses of Japan. 




T<rmcid Gardens. 47 

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 baskets 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 popula- 
tion 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 crop- 
ping. 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 Worsum' in the niffht and 
anchored to await morning and tide before ascending; the 
Hwangpoo, believed bv some geographers to be the middle 



Graves i)i Yangtsc Delta. 



49 




50 Grave Lands of China. 

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 await- 
ing 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 j>\am under the ever 
increasing load of river silt. 

A closer view of these graves in tht^ 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 agricul- 
tural 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 surmount- 
ing 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. 



Space Given to Graves. 



51 



Everywhere we went in China, about all of the very 
old and large cities, the proportion of grave land to culti- 
vated fields is very large, in the vicinity of Canton Chris- 
tian college, on Honain island, more than fifty per cent of 
the land was given over to graves and in many i)laces 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 whicli water 
may be more easilj' applied and which are the most produc- 
tive. 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 




Fig. 2.5. — Goats pasturing on grave land near Shanghai, and graves in hiDr 
L.nds near Canton. 



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 



52 



Grave Lands of China. 



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 




"'rtSsSi'^-iX^s* .^- ^-_U\-^ < > ur~^fh-R 




Fig. 2G.— Cluster of graves in brick vaults, lower section; and isolated grave 
ID garden, with two large grave mounds, upper section. 



Graves in Shantung and Cliihli. 53 

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 b.y 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 temporarj^ 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 discern- 
ible 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 clead 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 thev 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 tem- 
porary' location for the body, waiting for a favorable oppor- 
tunity to remove it to the family group. This is often the 
occasion for the isolated coffin so frequently seen under a 



54 



Grave Lands of China. 




6-^ 







^ o 



I'cmpurary Burial. 55 

simple tliateh of i-iee straw, as in Fig. 29 ; and the 
man.Y 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 tlie body rests, this acting as an effective absorb- 
ent. 




Fig. 29. — Temporary burial, c-ofEn tluitched witii straw; gravts on th^' higher 
]and at the right in background. 

It is the custom in some parts of China, if not in all, to 
periodically restore the mounds, maintaining their hight 
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 cen- 
turies 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 earnine of the family is considered 
and when there is added to this the yearly expense of 



56 



Grave Lands of China. 







Expense of Buriah. 57 

ancestoi' worship. How such voluntarj' burdens are as- 
sumed by people under such circumstances is hard to 
understand. Missionaries assert it is fear of evil conse- 
quences 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 peo- 
ple with strong filial affection should have reached, early 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 com- 
fort? 

Even in our own case it will hardly be maintained that 
our burial customs have reached their best and final solu- 
tion, 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 



58 



Grave Lands in China. 




A lSlru)i(j Race. 



59 



few appeared underfed. To realize that these are strong, 
hardy men it was only neeessarj' to watch them carrjdng 
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 ever long distances, 












Fig. S2.— Men freighters going inland with loads ol matches. 



as seen in Fig. 32, prove their great endurance. This same 
tjT)e of vehicle, too. is one of the common means of trans- 
porting 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 fanners had 
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 Hong- 
kong to meet spring at Canton, beyond the Tropic of Can- 
cer, 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 in- 
creased 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, sev- 
enty miles to sea, where there is a lighthouse and a tele- 
graph 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 inacces- 
sible hights 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 



Shanghai to Hongkong. 61 

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 Chung- 
ming 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 j'ear 
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 beauti- 
ful 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. 



62 To Hongkong and Canton. 

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 inter- 
spersed 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 de- 
scends every fifteen to twenty minutes, affording communi- 
cation 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 con- 
crete gutters and bridges, along which one may travel on 
foot, on horseback, by ricksha or sedan chair, but too nar- 
row 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 accessi- 
ble to the residents of any city. It was the beginning of 
the migratorv season for birds, and trees and shrubbery 
thronged with many species. 



Worl-C'is ill Hongkong. 



63 



JIany of the women in Hongkong were seen engaged in 
sneh lieavv 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, hut 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 







Fig. 33.— Usual method ol sawing lumber in China. 



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. 



64 



To Hongkong and Canton. 



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 hight 
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 build- 
ings, mortar was being carried in baskets swinging from 




Fig. 



34.— Happy Valley, Hongkong Island, with its terraced gardens and 
scattered dwellings. 



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, 



A Florist's Garden. 



65 



was seen in many Chinese shops in Hongkong and other 
cities, operated hy Chinese men and women, purchased, 
freight prepaid, at two-thirds the retail price in the United 
States. Snch 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. 




Fig. 



—Statuary floral pieces in florist's garden, Happy Valley, Hong- 
kong, China. 



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 ter- 
raced 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 irri- 
gating certain crops, notwithstanding the damp, foggy, 
showery weather. Turning the head of the valley, atten- 
tion was drawn to a walled enclosure and a detour down 



66 



To Hongkong and Canton. 







Garden Ferfihisaiitin. 



67 



the slope Viroiight iis to a florist's garden within which 
were rows of large potted foliage plants of senii-shrubhery 
habit, seen in Fig. 35, trained in the form of life-size 
hnman figures with limbs, arms and trnnk provided with 
highly glazed and colored porcelain feet, hands and head. 
These, with man.v other potted plants and ree.'^'. including 
dwarf varieties, are grown under out-door lattice shelters 
in different parts of China, for sale to the wealtliy Chinese 
families. 







Fig. 37.— Eect'ptaclcs for collectint' liquid manure, and at their right a pile ol 
ashes and a pile of stable manure for fertilizing the garden. 

Hew thorough is the tillage, how efficient and painstak- 
ing the garden fitting, and how closely the ground is crowd- 
ed to it,s upper limit of producing power are indicated in 
Fig. 36: and when one stops and studies the detail in 
such arardens he expects in its executor an orderly, careful, 
frugal and industrious man. getting not a little satisfac- 
tion out of his creations however ai-di^ous his task or pro- 
longed his day. If he is in the garden rr one meets him 



68 To Hongkong and Canton. 

at the house, clad as the nature of his duties and compensa- 
tion have determined, you may be disappointed or feel 
arising an unkind judgment. But who would risk a repu- 
tation so clad and so environed? Jlany 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 feed- 
ing the millions and who has carried through centuries 
the terrible burden of taxes levied by dishonor and need- 
less 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 
drift-wood heaped upon it. 

Not only are these people extremely careful and pains- 
taking 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 giown, 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 pro- 
cured, 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 abun- 
dant 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 



Water Suiiphj for Gardens. 



69 







I 



'''0 To Hongkong and Canton. 

slope of Happy Valley to his garden. By the side of this 
tank are the eovered pails in which the night soil was 
brought, perhaps more than a mile, to be tirst 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 scrupulouslj- 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 wash- 
ings 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 cloudj^ 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, sug- 
gesting 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 segre- 
gated, in obedience to police regulation, into blocks and 
streets with each setting sun. but only to scatter again 
with the coming mom. At night, after a fixed hour, no 
one is permitted to leave shore and cross the vacant water 
strip except from certain piers and wich the permission of 
the police, who take the number of the sampan and the 
names of its occupants. Over the harbor three large search 



Water for Terraced Gardens. 



71 




^2 Tu Hongkung and Canton. 

lights were sweeping and it was curious to see tlie junks 
and other craft suddenly burst into full blazes of light, 
like so many monstrous fire-flies, to disappear ana 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 eases of foul play where people have 
lett 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 kind- 
ness of Consul-General Amos P. Wilder in sending a tele- 
gram 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 bo,ys, 
gleaning their entire living from the grave lands and 
ad.iacent 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 



Winter (rardciiing. 



7y 



111 prcdu."ing somothino- needful. Fields which had matured 
two erops of riee during the long summer, had been labor- 
iously, and largely by hand labor, thrown into strong 
ridges as seen in Fig. -10, to permit still a third winter 
crop of some vegetalile to he taken from the land. 




Fig. iO. — Looking across fields which have borne two crops ol rice, now 
' ridged lor leeks and other vegetables as a winter crop. 

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 Happj' Valley, there was abimdant 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 



T-i To Hongkong and Canton. 

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 thev have other methods of "manuring the soil." 




Fig. 41. — boat load of human waste in canal on Honam Island, brought 
from Canton and being used in feeding winter vegetables. 

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 popiilation. The 
mud collects in their canals and obstructs movement. They 



About Canton. 75 

must be kept opeu. 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 exp.ended 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 w'aters, 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, gi;andmother 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 manj' 
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 similarlj' 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. 



76 To Hongkong and Canton. 

Boats selling va&ny kinds of steaming hot dishes were 
common. Among these was riee tied in green leaf wrap- 
pers, 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 cur- 
rene.y 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 eentavos, in Prance 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' 



Sanitary Measures. 11 

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 ex- 
posed on the frame, suggesting chains of copper more 
than money. At one of the go-downs or warehouses in 
Tsingtao, where freight was being tiansf erred from a 
steamer, the carriers were receiving their pay in these 
coin. The pay-master stood in the doorw-ay 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 steve- 
dores 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 tlie sideboard 
sat the complete embodiment of our tireless cookers, keeping 
boiled water hot for making tea. This device and the 
custom are here centuries old and throughout these coun- 
tries 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 man.y 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 streain. A live fish may 
even be sliced before the eves 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, hang- 
ing exposed in the markets of the •very narrow streets in 
Canton, shaded from the hot sun under awninffs admitting 
light overhead throucrh translucent oyster-shell latticework. 
Perhaps these fowl h^d been cooked in hot oil and before 
servinsr would be similarlv headed. At any rate it is per- 



"8 To Hongkong and Canton. 

fectly clear that among' these people many very funda- 
mental sanitary practices are rigidly observed. 

One fact which we do not fully understand is that, 
wherever we went, house tlies 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 healtli 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 nuis- 
ance, and then expend millions of dollars on screens and 
fly poison which onl.y 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 state- 
ment 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 stem, 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 railwav tariff. The dredging and clearing of 
the canals and water channels in and about Canton 
is likewise accomplished with the same foot-power, 
often bv families living on the dredge boats. A 
dipper dredge is used, constructed of strong bamboo 



Chinese Foot-puiver. 



79 



strips woven into the form of a sliding, two-iiorse road 
seraper, guided by a long bamboo liandle. The dredge 
is drawn along the bottom by a rope winding about the 
projecting axle of the foot-power, propelled liy three or 
more people. When the dipper reaches the axle and is 
raised from the water it is swung aboard, em].>tied and 
returned by means of a long arm like the old well sweep, 




Fig. 42.— The wooden foot-power of China, being used to propel the wooden- 
chain irrigation pump. 



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. Thiis the chan- 
nels 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 sedi- 
ment. 



80 To Hongkong and Canton. 

The mechanical principle involved in the hoy'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 momen- 
tum 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 posi- 
tion 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 pres- 
sure at the proper time permits the momentum of the 
revolving weight to rewind the cords and the next down- 
ward pressure brings the drill agai^i into service. 



IV. 
UP THE SI-KIANG, WEST EIVER. 



On the morning of jMarch 10th we took passage on the 
Nanning for Wuehow, 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 sum- 
mer 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 ex- 
cuse for it, was threatened famine resulting from destruc- 
tive 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 pa- 
trolling the river ; all Chinese passengers were searched for 
concealed weapons as they came aboard, even though Gov- 
ernment soldiers, and all arms taken into custody until the 
end of the .iourney. 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 



82 JJp the Sikiang, West River. 

rail from Canton to Sam Shui, a government pirate detec- 
tive was in our coach. 

The Sikiang is one of the great rivers of China and in- 
deed of the world. Its width at Wuchow at low water was 
nearlj' 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 nar- 
row 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. Fluc- 
tuations in the hight 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. Ex- 
cept 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. 



Delta of the Sikiang 83 

At times we approached near enough to the fields to see 
how they were laid out. Prom 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, llany of the fields were bearing sugar cane 
standing eight feet high. The Chinese do no sugar refining 
but boil the sap imtil it wdll solidify, when it is run into 
cakes resembling chocolate or our brown maple sugar. Im- 
mense 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 per- 
mit 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 man- 
ner 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 mneh re- 



84 



Up the Sikiang, West River. 



sembling cotton that our tirst 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 man- 
ner 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 be- 
tween them. Mulberries were occupying the ground be- 
fore the freshly cut trenches we saw were dug. and all the 




rig. 43.— Field of mulberry having the surface covered with fresh earth takea 
from ditches dividing the land into beds. 



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 mul- 
berry 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 



Mulberry Fields. 85 

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 doul)t that the mulberry fields were being covered 
with it. It was here that a rain set in and almost like 
magic the fields blossomeu out with great numbers of giant 
rain hats and kdttysols, where people had been unobserved 
before. From one o'clock until six in the afternoon we 
had travelled 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 AVuchow was through a hill country, the slopes rising 
steeplv 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 her- 
baceous growth and small scattering trees, oftenest pine, 
four to sixteen feet high. Fig. 44 being a ti^'pical 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 excep- 
tions and we were continually surprised at the remarkable 
steepness of the slopes. Avith convexly rounded contours al- 
most 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 con- 
ditions. 

Throughout the hill-land section of this raightv river the 
most characteristic and persistent human features were the 
stacks of bru.sh-wood and the piles of stove wood along the 



86 Ui) the Sikiang, West River. 

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 
usuallj' 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 




Fig. 44.— Scantily woodtd hills on the Sikiang. Boatload oJ stove wood; 
stack of pine bough fuel in bundles behind. The trees are small pine from 
which the lower limbs have been cut for fuel. 

along steep slides which in the distance resemble paths lead- 
ing 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 slacked, while the wood was sim- 
ilarly corded about the dwelling, as seen in Fig. 44. The 
wood was going to Canton and other delta cities ^vhile the 
pine brughs were taken to the lime and cement kilns, many 



Matting Rush. 87 

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 vil- 
lages 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 ex- 
changed 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 shel- 
ters less substantial than Indian wigwams, but engaged in a 
great variety of work, and many water butfalo 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 car- 
rying the bit at one end and a shoulder rest at the other. 
Pressing the bit to its work with the shoulder, it was driven 



88 



Dj) the Sikiang, West River. 




si 






About Wuchow. 



89 



with the string of a long 1)0W wra])ped 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 satur- 
ated with water and one end raised on a support four feet 
above the ground. A bundle of burning rice straw moved 




Fig. 46. — Wooden fork shaped from the limbs of a tree by simple means of 
steaming and drying. 



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 



!)() Vp the Sikiang, West River. 

joint of bamboo stem a foot long, nearly two inches in diam- 
eter 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, re- 
taining the smoke for a time, then slowly expire and fill 
the lungs again, after an interval of nat^lral breathing. 

On returning to Canton we went by rail, with an in- 
terpreter, to Samshui, visiting fields along the way, and 
Fig. 47 is a view of one landscape. The woman was pick- 
ing 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 
ridere 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 fertil- 
ized. One such is seen in Fig. 49. where a laborer was 
engaged at the time in brinffing 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 oc- 
cupy 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 



Gardening at Samshici. 



91 




92 



Up the Siliiang, West River. 




Work and Wages. 93 

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 teds 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, in- 
creasing with long usage, for they are periodically drained 
by pumping and the foot or two of miid which has accu- 
mulated, removed pnd sold as fertilizer to planters of rice 
and other crops. Tt is a common practice, too, among the 
fish growers, to fertilize the Dords. and in case a foot path 
leads alongside, screens are built over the water to provide 



94 



Up the Sikimig, West Biver. 




i 



FisJi Culture. 



95 



accommodation for travelers. Fish reared in the better 
fertilized ponds bring a higher price in the market. The 
fertilizing of the -n-ater favors a stronger growth of food 
forms, both plant and animal, upon which the fish live and 









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Fig. 50.— Fields of ginger just planted: ridged and iurrowed lor drainage, 
showing the amount oi hand labor performed to secure the winter crop, 
following two of rice. 



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 thej' are 
often sliced in halves lengthwise and the cut surface 



96 JJp the Sihiang, West River. 

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 ilarch 15th we left Canton for Hong- 
kong and the following day embarked again on the Tosa 
Mara 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 fiftv 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 chil- 
dren to follow them. Surely it must be one of the great 
tasks of future statesmanship, education and eneineering 
skill to divert larger amounts of such sediments close along 
inshore in such manner as to add valuable new land an- 
nually 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 .iust 
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, funda- 
mentally aloner such lines as those iust sucqrested. They 
have accomplished an enormous share of these tasks by 
sheer force of body and will, building levees, digging ca- 



98 Extent of Canalization and Surface Fitting of Fields. 




Fig. 51.— Map of main canals in 718 square miles of Chekiang Province. Each 
line represents a canal. 



Counting Canals. 99 

nals, diverting tlie turbid waters of streams through, them 
and then carrjing 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 canaliza- 
tion and delta and other lowland reclamation work, or of 
the extent of surface fitting of fields which have been ef- 
fected in China, Korea and Japan through the many cen- 
turies, and which are still in progress. The lands so re- 
claimed 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 Shang- 
hai 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 extend- 
ing 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 hight of the fields above the water level ranged from 
four to twelve feet, during the April and Jlay 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 scarce- 
ly 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, wo 



100 Extent of Canalization and Surface Fitting of Fields. 

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 Nan- 
siang. This is an average of more than three canals per 
mile for this region and that between Shanghai and Hang- 
chow. 




Fig. 52. — Sketch map of portions of Chekiang and Kiangsu Provinces, repre- 
senting some 2,700 miles of main canals and over 300 miles of sea-wall. 
The sea-walls are represented by the very heavy black lines. The small 
rectangle shows the area covered by Pig. 61. 



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, rep- 
resents an area 175 by 160 miles, of which the last illustra- 
tion 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 Pig. 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, there- 



Miles of Carials. 101 

fore, that there exists today in the area of Fig. 52 not less 
tlian 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 thou- 
sand 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 sufiScient 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 
theYangtse valley, the provinces of Anhwei, Kiangsi, 
Hunan and Hupeh have very extensive canalized tracts, 
probably exceeding 28,000 square miles in area, and Pigs. 
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 



102 Extent of Canalization and Surface Fitting of Fields. 

in China, Korea and Japan equal to eight times the num- 
ber 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 




rig. 63.— Sketch map ol northeast Ohina showing the allHTial plain and the 
Grand Oanal, extending 800 miles through It from Hangchow to Tien- 
tsin. The unshaded land area lies mostly less than 100 feet above sea 
level. 



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 



Eiangsi Rice Fields. 



103 




Copyright, by Underwood & Underwood, N, V. 

Fig. 54.— View across valley of rice fields, recently traosiilauted. In Klangst 
provnee Cr.ina 



104 Extent of Canalization and Surface Fitting of Fields. 

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 Yang- 
chow and Hwaianfu, is itself a great levee, holding back 
the waters to the west above the eastern plain, diverting 
them south, into the Yangtsekiang. But it is also provided 
with spillways for use in times of excessive flood, per- 
mitting 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 reenforcing series of two or three at different dis- 
tances back from the channel where the stream bed is above 
the adjacent country, in order to prevent widespread dis- 
aster 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 hight 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 con- 
trolling flood waters, all of which are steadily filling with 



Hunan Rice' Fieldr^. 



105 




Copyright, by Underwood & Underwood, N. T. 

Fig. 65.— Ix)o!dng up the valley across terraced rice fields flooded with water. 
In Hunan province. 



106 Exient of Canalization and Surface Fitting of Fields. 

the sediments brought from the far away uncultivable 
mountain slopes and which are ultimately destined to be- 
come 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 habit- 
able 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 twent_y 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 cen- 
turies 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 phy- 
sical condition, and adding new plant food in the form of 
virgin soil of the richest type, thiis contributing to the 
maintenance of soil fprtilitv, hisrh maintenance capacity 
and permanent agriculture through all the centuries. 



Land Buildhitj and Disastrous Floods. 107 

These operations of maintenance and improvement had 
a verj' early inception ; thej' 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 Stiel- 
er's atlas, revised in 1886, with the recent German survey. 
Earlier than 2255 B. C, more than 4100 years ago, Em- 
peror 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 en- 
gineer is said to have written several treatises on agricul- 
ture 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 manj' times 
in the years since before the time of the Great Yu, who per- 
haps 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, emptjing 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 be 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 
cit.v of Tsinan in Shantung, no less than 4,000 cubic yards 
of water per second, and three times this volume when run- 
ning at flood. This is water sufficient to inundate thirty- 
three square miles of level country ten feet deen in twenty- 
four hours. What must be said of the mental status of a 



108 Extent of Canalization and Surface Fitting of Fields. 

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 dev- 
astated by it, and it is such events as these which have 
won for the river the names "China's Sorrow," "The (Jo- 
governable" 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 mid- 
dle 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, dur- 
ing 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 dovra 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 be inaugurated to grow with the 
years and make certain perpetual maintenance for those to- 
follow. 



Canalization and Land Bidlding. l(-)9 

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 
^s 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 
Ijeen 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 exten- 
sion of its coastal plains, conserving and building out of 
the waste of erosion wrested from the great streams, hun- 
dreds of square miles of the richest aud 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 
heen 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 ma- 
terial 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 drain- 
ing of her vast areas of low land, and for utilizing the 
tremendous loads of silt borne by her streams more effect- 
ively in fertilizing existing fields and in building and re- 
claiming 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 



110 Extent of Canalization and t^urfacc Fitting of Fields^ 

rivers of China subject to overflow, completely under con- 
trol. With the Hwang ho confined to its channel, the ad- 
jacent 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 dur- 
ing 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 opportun- 
ity 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 cen- 
turies. 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 be 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 produc- 
tive 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, bear- 
ing its burden of fertile sediment. 

But the conservation and utilization of the wastes of 
soil erosion, as applied in the delta plain of China, stupen- 
dous as this work has been, is nevertheless small when 
measured by the savings which accrue from the careful 



Conservation of Fertility. 



Ill 




112 Extent of Canalization and Surface Fitting of Fieleh. 

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 al- 
most completely prevented. The illustrations. Pigs. 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 tolcracad 
at the present time in our southern and south Atlantic 
states is permitted nowhere in the Far Bast, 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 multtim in parvo treatment 
which charaeteri/.cR so many of the practices of these 



CoHitrvaiiun of Fertility. 113 

people, which have crystalized 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 possi- 
ble 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 necessarv. 

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 throwm 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 comoletelv drained only by pumping or bv 
evaporation during the drv season. Into such reservoirs 
the excess surface water is drained where all suspended 
matter carried from the field collects and is returned, either 



114 Extent of Canalization and Surface Fitting of Fields^ 




3a 






tn o 
O tUD 



5;^ 



S5 



9 en" 
05 « 






I o 



Conservation of Fertility. 



115 




a a 



^ OQ 

> o 



« 5? 



116 Extent of Canalization and Surface Fitting of Fields. 

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 illustra- 
tion, 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. 



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^^^-im?^"n 



Fig. 69.— Two compost pits filled with roughage and mud from the canal, in 
preparation ol compost lor the fields. The narrow path along the canal 
Js one of the common thoroughfares in Kiangsu province. 

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 tilled. 

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 



('on--^cyvi)tfl Wafer and Fcrtilitij. 



117 



in part liy underflow and capillary rise to the soil from 
which it was collected, or be applied directly for irrigation 





- --" "--;.-:;.'--'" . : _ .:,;,.; ';■ " 


-'.'--.:■-'■■ ■.',-!i..,:,^.^^S:Ss^^i:.. 


^M 


W'i 


■^^^^ 


^^^^^3 



Fig. < i.— '1 n iK'l.iiig vS fiflds for drrtinage. con.=erTatiori of rainfall and ol 
tn'tility, iii the Siiantuiifr jTovince. Trenches are t^vo feet widr on the 
bottom, six or eight feet wide at the top, and two and a half to three 
feet deep. 



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 conven- 
tional price for the service rendered. On our way we 
passed several loaded carryalls of the type seen in Fig. 
61, on vi^hich 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 inter- 
val, 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 Shan- 
tung province a missionary was paying a Chinese cook ten 
dollars per month, a man for general work nine dollars 



Car Fare and Wages. 



119 



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 



»o-»5- 


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mBJiH^t^^V^^^S^^^''-'' -''^^^a 








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BH^^^^^^HBBB^^^^*^^^^^^ 




^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 






fe^^ 




ife,£^««^!3&>«Li;^^,jt <^-. . ^isif* 



Fig. 61.— A common means of transport on the streets ol Shanghai, used 
much more frequently by women than by men. 



house. Missionaries in China find such servants reliable 
and satisfaetorj'. 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 



120 Some Customs of the Common People. 

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. 




rig. 62.— A sewing circle in the open air and sunshine, Shanghai. 

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 ap- 
peared generally happy and contented if they have some- 
thing to do, and showed clearly that they were well nour- 
ished. 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 



Worker.^: in Shanghai. 121 

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 physi- 
cally 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 densel.y crowded people, either Chinese, Jap- 
anese 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 venders 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 an- 
cient, simple yet eflfective method we witnessed in the 
farm village along the canal seen in Pig. 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 



122 



Some Custonif; of the Common People. 



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 




.^^ji^^m 



Fig. 63.— Eating lunch. 



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 



Calico Printing. 



123 



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 




.'■^aar^fc-<.-. 



rig. C4. — Stone mill in common use lor grinding beans and various kinds ol 

^ain. 

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 printerj' of 
olden times were hanging some hundreds of stencils bear- 
ing different patterns. In our great calico mills, printing 
hundreds of yards per minute, the mechanics and the 
chemistrj^ differ only in detail of application and in dis- 
patch, not in fundamental principle. 

In almost any direction we travelled outside the city, 
in the pleasant mornings when the air was still, the laying 



124 



Some Cus-toma of the Common People. 



of warp for cotton elotli 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 war]) is laid each 
will be rolled upon its stretcher and removed to the house 
to be woven. 

In many places in Kiaiigsu province batteries of the 
large dye pits were seen sunk in the fields and lined with 







.^'■■■-■. '■ '■ -: 


■:■ 




; ^ 


pyn 




Mg 


^'SSt 


R 


m| 


mMMV 





J^^^M 


00^ 


jSi 


P^^l 




0* 


^g 


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m 


JM 


uSIHwN^'^'i^^^ j«? 


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B 



Fig. 65. — Laying warp in the country for four bolts of cotton cloth. 



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 shel- 
tered 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 serv- 
ing as manure receptacles. Our interpreter stated however 
that there is a growing dissatisfaction with foreign goods 
on account of their lack of durability; but we saw many 



Home l)id Its! lies. 



125 



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 la.ying 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 




Fig. 66.— Two dye pits under woven arbor shelter, now abandoned for their 
original purpose and used as manure receptacles. The trees in the rear are 
a typical clump of bamboo so frequently seen about farm houses. 



room to work between it and the sidewalk without imped- 
ing 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 recep- 
tacles 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 



126 



Some Customs of the Common People. 



twelve years, each twaaged the string of their heavy bam- 
boo 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 




Fig 67.— Japanese form of bow used in the home lor spreading cotton in 
making wadding and cotton batting. 



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 



Whipping Cotton. 127 

dexterity and uniformity, the mattress growing upward 
with perfectly vertical sides, straight edges and square 
comers. 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 prob- 
ably 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 
back 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 
verv' 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 carefullj^ 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 basketlike 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 mat- 
tress on all sides and sewed down, after which, by means 
of two heavy solid wooden disks eighteen inches in diame- 



128 Some Customs of the Common People. 

ter, father and son compressed the cotton until the thick- 
ness 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 
w^as 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 growTi 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 propor- 
tion of about twenty pounds of salt to one hundred povmds 
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 partlj' as a source of soil nitrogen, is closely 
allied to our alfalfa. This is the Medicago astragahts, 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 js out 
of season. When picked very young, wealthy Chinese 



Vrgetahle Market. 



129 



families pay an extra higli price for the tender shoots, 
sometimes as much as 20 to 28 cents, our currency, per 
pound. 




Fig. 68.- 



"Salted pabbaee." prepared from young rape, displayed for sale in 
Boone Eoad market, Shanghai. 



The markets are thronged with people making their pur- 
chases in the early mornings, and the congested con- 
dition, 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 BOAD MAR- 
KET. SHANGHAI, APRIL 6TH. IflOf'. WITH PRICES 
EXPRESSED IN U. S. CDBRENCT. 



Cents. 

Lotus rootB, 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 

9 



Cents. 

Tee Tsai, per lb 53 

Chinrse celery, per lb 67 

Oliinese clover, per lb 53 

Chinese clover, very young, lb... 21. 33 
Oblong white cabbage, per lb -.00 



130 



Some Chistoms of the Common People. 



Cents. 

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 bead 22 

Kale, per lb l.tO 

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 

Bed 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 



Cents. 

White beans, dry, per lb 4.30 

Radishes, per lb 1.29 

Garlic, per lb 2.15 

Kohl rabi, per lb 2.15 

Mint, per lb 4.30 

Leeks, per lb 2.13 

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 2.0O 

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 5.69 



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 unhesi- 
tatingly 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 cus- 
tomer 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 cheeked 
the staterrent with his own scales. An animated dialogue 



Bamhuo Sprouts and Chinese Clover. 181 

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 




Fig 69.— Two beds of Chinese cloyer (Merlicnfio nstragalvs) crown In the 
garden for liunian food In the season and for soil fertiUty later. 

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 hight at the 
stage for cutting. They are shipped in large quantities 
from province to province where they do not grow or 



132 



Some Cusloms of the Common People. 



\yhen they are oiit of season. Those we saw in Nagasaki, 
referred to in Fig. 22, had come from Canton or Swatow 




Fig. 70.— Boone Eoad vegetable market, April 6th, Sbanghal, China. 
vegetables in the lower section are lotus roots. 



The large 



or possibly Formosa. The form, foliage and bloom of the 
bamhoo give the most beautiful effects in the landscape, 
especially when grouped with tree forms. They are usually 



Lotus. 



133 



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 hight 
between April and August, even when it exceeds thirty 
or even sixty feet in hight. The buds spring from fleshy 
underground stems or roots whose stored nourishment 
permits this rapid growth, which in its earlier stages may 




Fig. 71. — Lotus poDd with plant in bloom; cultivated for their fleshy roots 
used for food, shown in Fig. 70. 



exceed twelve inches in twent3'-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 intro- 
duced and largely grown in many parts of this country. 
Lotus roots form another article of diet largely used and 
widely cultivated from Canton to Tokj'o. 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 



JLi-i *S'(>»if Customs of the Common People. 

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 verj' 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 exten- 
sively 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 eorm 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 ealtropes, 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 CHydropynim lat- 
ifolium) 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 indicat- 
ing 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 



Economy of Vegetable Diet. 135 

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 fatten- 
ing 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 corre- 
sponding 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 hitman 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 ovm wastes 
to the field for the maintenance of fertility'. In using 
these immature forms of vegetation so largely as food 



136 Some Cicstoms of the Common People. 

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 daj^ to permit of ripening crops. 



YII. 

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 
multipl}-. AVith the increasing cost and ultimate exhaus- 
tion 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 ma- 
terials from which to manufacture not only paper and 
the substitutes for lumber, but fuels as well. The complete 
utilization of everj' stream which reaches the sea, rein- 
forced 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 engineer- 
ing 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 



138 llic Fuel Problem, Building and Textile Materials. 

and Japan a density of population such as to require the 
extensive cultivation of crops for fuel and building ma- 
terial, 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 bum 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 transport- 
ing 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 escap- 
ing where it may. The same method of heating we saw 
in use in the post office at Yokohama during February. 
The tires 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 



Chaixoal and Coal Dust. 139 

seen in Fig. 72, using a byproduct 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 door of a shop. By his side was a pile of 
powdered charcoal, a dish of rice syrup byproduct 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 





^ 


r^ 


_.^ - -1 


-::: 'p}-¥ 






a|ijMi!H 


'M^ 








^^mJtmim 


Mr-- 




2? -r* ■-■■'.■ :^- ■■. 


^^"/S 




^'fS-^'*''- 


^f^'^H^^^^ 



Fig. 72.— Charcoal balls briquetted "with rice water or clay, for use as fuel. 

charcoal ; then followed three well directed blows from the 
hammer upon the ramming tool, compressing the charge 
of moistened, stiekv' 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 efificient 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 



140 The Fuel Problem, Building and Textile Materials. 

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 difi'erent 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 be 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 resid- 
ing at Sunking in Szeehwan, estimated that a farmer's 



Winf(r Dress and Cliimncu Bnls. 



141 



wardrobe, om/e it was procured, could be maintained with 
an annual expenditure of $2.25 of our currency, this sum 
priu'uring the materials for both repairs and renewals. 
The intense individual economj-, extending to the small- 
est matters, so universally practiced by these people, has 
sustained the massive strength of the Mongolian nations 




Fig. 73. — A Kiangsu country woman in winter dress. 



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-aere 
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 



142 The Fuel Problem, Building and Textile Materials. 

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 impart- 
ing 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, sepa- 
rated 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, be- 
come 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 fermenta- 
tion 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 alto- 
gether as labor lost. 

Our own observations have shown that heating soils 
to dryness at a temperature of 110° C. greatly increases 
the freedom with which plant food may be recovered 



stem Fuel. 143 

from them by the solvent power of water, and the same 
heating doubtless improves the physical and biological con- 
ditions 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 phos- 
phorus and 5.34 per cent of potassium. We practice burn- 
ing 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 fonna- 
tion 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. 



144 The Fuel Problem, Building and Textile Materials. 




Fi((I for Manufacturers. 



145 



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-storj', tile- 
roofed building serving as store, warehouse, factory and 
dwelling, a famil.v of four generations were at work, the 
grandfather supervising in the mill and the grandmother 




Fig. 



-Cotton stem fuel being conveyed from tlie canals to city market 
stalls. 



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 Iving at rest or eating, 
awaiting their turn at the ten-hour working dav. Two 
of the mills wp-c hnrizrn p1 granite burrs more than four 
10 



146 TJic Fuel Problem, Building and Textile Materials. 




I 



steaming Tea cnid Meal. 



147 



feet in diameter, the upper one revolving once v^'ith 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 




Fig. 77.— Appliance for steaming tea leaves, used in Japan and the same in 
principle as used in China lor steaming meal from which oil is to be 
expressed. 



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 



148 The Fuel Problem, Building and Textile Materials. 

twelve years steadily feeding rice chaff into the fire with 
his left hand at the rate of about thirtj' charges per min- 
ute, 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 liars. 
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, tb(.' 
loosened line receiving an additional wedge to tak" up 
the slack after drawing back the myster 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 tb*' 
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. 



IVaft/- Buffalo as Dairij <'ous. 



149 



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 sokl as feed, and a 
near-by Chinese dairyman was using them for his herd 
of forty water buffalo, seen in Fig. 78. producing milk 



,i 


^^««^^^^^H^Htf 


i„ 










|k 


^USSS^Si^^^K'^^h'iJBf^^wB^s 


ii.WMWxS^ 




S 


S!S« 


ttf;j|^i>. '^ 


--• 
I 


.■•i.*y,6-;ir)=T; 


Sf ■■*»-'! 

-; — -- 






^^^^m 

^^/N^ 




^^^ 










g^^f; 


^^ 



Ft- 



-A .laifT hf-r^l cf waiter biitTalo owned by a Chinese iarmer who was 
sr; living milk lo foreigners in S'hanghai. 



for the foreign trade in Shanghai. This herd of forty 
cows, one of wlich 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 1 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 
familv of Rev. W. H. Hudson, of the Southern Presby- 



150 The Fuel Problem, Building anel Textile Materials. 

terian 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 




Fig. T!).— Water buffalo and call, Ka.5hing, Cliekiang province, China. 



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 



Pint Buugh Fuel. 



151 



for firing tlie lime and cement kilns. At Tsingtao we saw 
the pine bough fuel on the backs of mules, Fig. 80, com- 
ing from the hills in Shantung pro^-ince. Similar fuels 
were being used in Korea and we have photographs of 
large pine bough fuel stacks, taken in Japan at Funabashi, 
east from Tokr^'o. 




Fig. SO.— Pine bougli fuel coming iato Tsingtoo from the Shantung hills, China. 



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 delib- 
erately secured even through the transplanting of nur- 
serj^ stock grown expressly for that purpose. TVe 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. E. A. Haden. of the 
Elizabeth Blake hospital, near Soochnw, insisted that the 
Chinese were deliberate foresters rnd tliat thev reqrularlv 



lb'2 Till Fuel Problem, Building and Textile Materials. 

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, ilr. Haden and a cook for the consid- 
eration 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 remodelling 
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. E. A. 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 con- 
tributing 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 sura. If the friejids 



Loans and Interest. 



153 



agree each pays 1000 easli 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 paj^ments 
are met in full at the times agreed upon. Not infrequently 
a small rate of interest is charged. 




Fig. 81. — Residence houseboat used by family for carrying passengers on rivers 
and canals, China. 



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 



154 The Fuel Problem. Building and Textile Materials. 

$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 




Pig. 82.— Forest cutting in narroii .strins on steep liiljsidcs west of Soochow, 

China. 



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, varving from two to ten years, stretched directly 
up the slope, often in strong contra.st on account of the 
straight boundaries and dififerent ages of the timber. Some 



Fuel from the Hills. 



155 



■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. 




Pig. 83.— Bundles of pine and oak bough fuel gathered on the hill land.s west 
of Soochow, Kiangsu. China. 



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 writh 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 atforestation of these strips of 
liillside showed that the extensive digging necessitated by 



156 The Fuel Problem, Building and Textile Materials. 



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 




Fig. S4. — Tiny nursery of small vines growing among Icrns in a shady wood, 
for replanting cut-over hillsides. 



on receipt of a trifle for his services. One of these little 
pine nurseries is seen in Fig. 84, many heing 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. 



Grass aud Straw Fuc'l. 



157 



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 stubl)le and grass of the previous sea- 
sou, from the grave lands where there was less than could 




Fig. 8G. — Dried grass luel gattiered on grave lands, Shanghai. 



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 secur- 
ing them as seen in the engraving. 

In the Shantung province, in Chihli and in I\Ianchuria, 
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 IMukden 



158 The Fuel Problem, Buileling and Textile Materials. 

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 




Pig. 86. — Bundles ol kaoliang fuel coming into Kiaochow market, Sbuntung. 



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: 



Fuel in Maiiclniria and Korea. 159 

or in basketwork cases woven from small brush and hold- 
ing 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 
Pig. 77. 

Along the ilukden-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 gen- 
erally 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 
IMukden and Antung in Manchuria ; between "Wiju and 
Fusan in Korea : and throughout most of our journey in 
Japan: from Nagasaki to Jloji 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 un- 



160 Th( Fuel Prohhin. Buihiing and TtxiiU MaU rials. 

der the shade of some of these wooded areas, yielding un- 
der favorahle 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 





HVCIK.. '"^ J'. lA !^ ■ •' ■ ''W^'^ 


'^^^^ Jtif ^W" ' ^^^^^^^^Hh^mI^IV^ ^^B^fl^E^^'-M^i.^' 



Pig. 87. — Japanese fuel coming down from the wooded bills. 



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 maj^ be similarly thatched, as was 
observed in the Cantcn 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 fs every three to five years but the 



Tile and Thaivli lluof^- 161 

old straw is iiio:lily prized as fertilizer for the fields on 
which it is growu, 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 be- 
ing abundant and near at hand. In Chihli and in Man- 
churia millet and sorghum stems, used alone or plastered, 
as in Fig. 88, with a mud mortar, sometimes mixed with 




Fig. 8.S.— MiUet-thatched rools plastered with earth; mud chimneys; walls ol 
houses plastered with mud, and winter storage pits for vegetables built ol 
clay and chaff mortar. 

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 lum- 
ber. 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 to- 
gether and to the rafters with twine, thus forming a sort of 
matting. A laj^er 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 
11 



162 The Fuel Problem, Building and Textile Materials. 

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 plas- 
tered with earth mortar or with an earth-lime mortar, 
which is less liable to wash in heavy rain. 




Pig. 89.— Air-dried earth bricli: Jor tiouse building. 



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. i 



Earth Brick. 



163 



Brick made from earth are very extensively Tised for 
house building, chaff and short straw being used as a bind- 
ing 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 founda- 
tion 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. 




Fig. 90.— Foundation of dwelling, consisting oi hard-burned brick; balance ol 
waU to be sun-dried earth brick, seen in Fig. 89. 

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 unbumed 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. 



164 The Fuel Problem, Builddng and Textile Materials. 

In addition to the multiple-function, farm-grown 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 aaid China grass 




Fig. 91. — Earth and clay brick kiln on the bank of the Pei ho, using sorghum 
stems for fuel. 



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 man- 
ufacture 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 cul- 
tivated land, cutting down the food producing area to 



Textile Products in Japan. 165 

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 tive inilliun dollars. Nor 
do these statements express the full measure of the produc- 
ing 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 pro- 
duced in 1906, in their homes as subsidiary work, 
$20,527,000 worth of manufactured articles. If corre- 
spondingly exact statistical data were available from 
China and Korea a similarly full utilization of cultural 
possibilities would be revealed there. 

Tliis marvelous heritage of economy, industry and thrift, 
bred of the stress of centuries, must not be permitted to 
lose virility through contact with western wasteful prac- 
tices, now exalted to seeming virtues through the dazzling 
brilliancy of mechanical achievements, ilore and more 
must labor be dignified in all homes alike, and economy, 
industry and thrift become inherited impulses compelling 
and satisfjdng. 

Cheap, rapid, long distance transportation, already well 
started in these countries, will bring with it a fuller utili- 
zation of the large stores of coal and mineral wealth and of 
the enormous available water power, and as a result there 
will come some temporar^^ lessening of the stress for fuel 
and with better forest management some relief along the 
lines of building materials. But the time is not a century 
distant when, throughout the world, a fuller, better devel- 
opment must take place along the lines of these most far- 
reaching and fundamental practices so long and so effect- 
ively followed by the Mongolian races in China, Korea and 
Japan. "When the enormous water-power of these coun- 
tries has been harnessed and brought into the foot-hills 



166 The Fuel Problevi, Building and Textile Materials. 

and down upon the margins of the valleys and plains in 
the form of electric current, let it, if possible, be in a 
large measure so distributed as to become available in the 
country village homes to lighten the burden and lessen the 
human drudgery and yet increase the efficiency of the 
human effort now so well bestowed upon subsidiary man- 
ufactures under the guidance and initiative of the home, 
where there may be room to breathe and for children to 
come up to manhood and womanhood in the best condi- 
tions possible, rather than in enormous congested factories. 



VIII. 
TEAMPS AFIELD. 



On March 31st we took the 8 A. M. train on the Shang- 
hai-Nanking railway for Kunshan, situated thirty-two 
miles west from Shanghai, to spend the day walking ia 
the fields. The fare, second class, was eighty cents, Mex- 
ican. A third class ticket would have been forty cents and 
a first class, $1.60, practically two cents, one cent and half 
a cent, our currency, per mile. The second class fare to 
Nanking, a distance of 193 miles, was $1.72, U. S. cur- 
rency, or a little less than one cent per mile. While the 
car seats were not upholstered, the service was good. 
Meals were served on the train in either foreign or Chinese 
style, and tea, coffee or hot water to drink. Hot, wet face 
cloths were regularly passed and many Chinese daily 
newspapers were sold on the train, a traveler often buying 
two. 

In the vicinity of Kunshan a large area of farm land 
had been acquired by the French catholic mission at a 
purchase price of $40, Mexican, per mow, or at the rate of 
$103.20 per acre. This they rented to the Chinese. 

It was here that we first saw, at close range, the details 
of using canal mud as a fertilizer, so extensively applied in 
China. Walking through the fields we came upon the 
scene in the middle section of Fig. 92 where, close on the 
right was such a reservoir as seen in Fig. 58. Men were 
in it, dipping up the mud which had accumulated over its 
bottom, pouring it on the bank in a field of Windsor beans, 
and the thin mud was then over two feet deep at that side 



168 



Tmm/ps Afield. 




Fig-. ()2. — In the lower section, along the path, basketsfui of canal mud had 
been applied in two rows at the rate of more than ](K) tons per acre. In 
the middle section workmen Just beyond the extreme right were removing 
mud from such a reservoir *ts is seon in Fig. 58. The upper section shows 
three men distributing canal mud between the rows of a field of Windsor 
beans. 



Fertilizing with Canal Mud. 169 

and flowing into tlie beans where it had already spread 
two rods, burying the plants as the engraving shows. When 
sufficiently drj' to be readily handled this would be spread 
among the beans as we found it being done in another 
field, shown in the upper section of the illustration. Here 
four men were distributing such mud, whieli had dried, 
between the rows, not to fertilize the beans, but for a suc- 
ceeding crop of cotton soon to be planted between the rows, 
before thej^ were harvested. The owner of this piece of 
land, with whom we talked and who was superintending 
the work, stated that his usual yield of these beans was 
three hundred catty per mow and that they sold them 
green, shelled, at two cents, Mexican, per catty. At this 
price and yield his return would be $15.48, gold, per acre. 
If there was need of nitrogen and organic matter in the soil 
the vines would be pulled green, after picking the beans, 
and composted with the wet mud. If not so needed the 
dried stems would be tied in bundles and sold as fuel or 
used at home, the ashes being returned to the fields. The 
Windsor beans are thus an early crop grown for fertilizer, 
fuel and food. 

This farmer was pajdng his laborers one hundred cash 
per day and providing their meals, which he estimated 
worth two hundred cash more, making twelve cents, gold, 
for a ten-hour daj^ Judging from what we saw and from 
the amount of mud carried per load, we estimated the men 
would distribute not less than eighty-four loads of eighty 
pounds each per day, an average distance of five hundred 
feet, making the cost 3.57 cents, gold, per ton for distri- 
bution. 

The lower section of Fig. 92 shows another instance 
where mud was being used on a narrow strip bordering the 
path along which we walked, the amount there seen having 
been broiight more than four himdred feet, by one man 
before 10 A. M. on the morning the photograph was taken. 
He was getting it from the bottom of a canal ten feet 
deep, laid bare by the out-going tide. Already he had 
brought more than a ton to his field. 



170 Tramps Afield. 

The carrying baskets used for this work were in the 
form of huge dustpans suspended from the carrying poles 
by two cords attached to the side rims, and steadied by the 
hand grasping a handle provided in the back for this pur- 
pose and for emptying the baskets by tipping. With this 
construction the earth was readily raked upon the basket 
and very easily emptied from it by simply raising the 
hands when the destination was reached. No arrange- 
ment could be more simple, expeditious or inexpensive for 
this man with his small holding. In this simple manner 
has nearly all of the earth been moved in digging the miles 
of canal and in building the long sea walls. In Shanghai 
the mud carried through the storm sewers into Soochow 
creek we saw being removed in the same manner during 
the intervals when the tide was out. 

In still another field, seen in Fig. 93, the upper portion 
shows where canal mud had been applied at a rate exceed- 
ing seventy tons per acre, and we were told that such 
dressings may be repeated as often as every two years 
though usually at longer intervals, if other and cheaper 
fertilizers could be obtained. In the lower portion of the 
same illustration may be seen the section of canal from 
which this mud was taken up the three earthen stairways 
built of the mud itself and permitted to dry before using. 
Many such lines of stairway were seen during our trips 
along the canals, only recently made or in the process of 
building to be in readiness when the time for applying the 
mud should arrive. To facilitate collecting the mud from 
the shallow canals temporary dams may be thrown across 
them at two places and the water between either scooped 
or pumped out, laying the bottom bare, as is often done also 
for fishing. The earth of the large grave mound seen across 
a canal in the center background of the upper portion of 
the engraving had been collected in a similar manner. 

In the Chekiang province canal mud is extensively used 
in the mulberry orchards as a surface dressing. We have 
referred to this practice in southern China, and Fig. 94 
is a view taken south of Kashing early in April. The boat 



Fertilizing ivitli Canal Mud. 



171 



anchored in front of the mulberrj' orchard is the home of 
a family coming from a distance, seeking employment dur- 
ing the season for picking mulherry leaves to feed silk- 
worms. We were much surprised, on looking back at the 




Pig. 93. — Section ol field covered with piles ol canal mud recently applied at 
the rate of more than 70 tons per acre; taken out of the canal up the three 
flights of earth steps shown in the lower part of the figure. 



boat after closing the camera, to see the head of the family 
standing erect in the center, having shoved back a section 
of the matting roof. 

The dressing of mud applied to this field formed a loose 
layer more than two inches deep and when compacted by 
the rains which would follow would add not less than a full 



172 



Tmmps Afield. 










Exchange of Soil. 173 

inch of soil over the entire orchard, and the weight per 
acre could not be less than 120 tons. 

Another equally, or even more, laborious practice fol- 
lowed by the Chinese farmers in this province is the per- 
iodic exchange of soil between mulberry orchards and the 
rice fields, their experience being that soil long used in the 
mulberry orchards improves the rice, while soil from the 
rice fields is very helpful when applied to the mulberry or- 
chards. We saw many instances, when travelling by boat- 
train between Shanghai, Kashing and Hangchow, of soil 
being carried from rice fields and either stacked on the 
banks or dropped into the canal. Such soil was oftenest 
taken from narrow trenches leading through the fields, lay- 
ing them off in beds. It is our .judgment that the soil 
thrown into the canals undergoes important changes, per- 
haps through the absorption of soluble plant food sub- 
stances such as lime, phosphoric acid and potash with- 
drawn from the water, or through some growth or fer- 
mentation, which, in the judgment of the farmer, makes 
the large labor involved in this procedure worth while. 
The stacking of soil along the banks was probably in 
preparation for its removal by boat to some of the mul- 
berry orchards. 

It is clearly recognized by the farmers that mud col- 
lected from those sections of the canal leading through 
country villages, such as that seen in Fig. 10, is both in- 
herently more fertile and in better physical condition than 
that collected in the open country. They attribute this 
difference to the effect of the village washing in the canal, 
where soap is extensively used. The storm waters of the 
city doubtless carry some fertilizing material also, although 
sewage, as such, never finds its way into the canals. The 
washing would be very likely to have a decided flocculating 
effect and So render this material more friable when 
applied to the field. 

One very important advantage which comes to the fields 
when heavily dressed with such mud is that resulting from 
the addition of lime which has become incorporated with 



174 



Tramps Afield. 



the silts through their flocculation and precipitation, and 
that which is added in the form of snail shells abounding in 
the canals. The amount of these may be realized from the 




Fiff 95— The recently removed canal mud, in the upper section ol the illustra- 
tion Ts heavily charged with large snail sheUa. The lower section shows 
the shells in the soil ol a recently spaded field. 

large numbers contained in the mud recently thrown out, as 
seen in the upper section of Fig. 95, where the pebbly ap- 
pearance of the surface is caused by snail shells. In the 
lower section of the same illustration the white spots are 



Snails and Watermelon Seeds. 175 

snail shells exposed in the soil of a recently spaded field. 
The shells are bj' no means as numerous generally as here 
seen but yet sufficient to maintain the supply of lime. 

Several species of these snails are collected in quantities 
and used as food. Piles containing bushels of the empty 
shells were seen along the canals outside the villages. The 
snails are cooked in the shell and often sold by measure to 
be eaten from the hand, as we buy roasted peanuts or pop- 
corn. When a purchase is made the vender clips the spiral 
point from each shell with a pair of small shears. This ad- 
mits air and permits the snail to be readily removed by 
suction when the lips are applied to the shell. In the ca- 
nals there are also large numbers of fresh water eel, shrimp 
and crabs as well as fish, all of which are collected and used 
for human food. It is common, when walking through the 
canal country, to come upon groups of gleaners busy in the 
bottoms of the shallow agricultural canals, gathering any- 
thing which may serve as food, even including small bulbs 
or the fleshy roots of edible aquatic plants. To facilitate 
the collection of such food materials sections of the canal 
are often drained in the manner already described, so that 
gleaning may be done by hand, wading in the mud. Fam- 
ilies living in houseboats make a business of fishing for 
shrimp. They trail behind the houseboat one or two other 
boats carrying hundreds of shrimp traps cleverly construct- 
ed in such manner that when they are trailed along the 
bottom and disturb the shrimps they dart into the holes in 
the trap, mistaking them for safe hiding places. 

On the streets, especially during festival days, one may 
see young people and others in social intercourse, busying 
their fingers and theii- teeth eating cooked snails or often 
watermelon seeds, which are extensively sold and thus 
eaten. This custom we saw first in the streets of a city 
south of Kashing on the line of the new railway between 
Hangchow and Shanghai. The first passenger train over 
the line had been run the day before our visit, which was a 
festival day and throngs of people were visiting the nine- 
story pagoda standing on a high hill a mile outside the city 



176 Tramps Afield. 

limits. The day was one of great surprises to these people 
who had never before seen a passenger train, and my own 
person appeared to be a great curiosity to many. No boy 
ever scrutinized the face of a caged chimpanzee closer, with 
purer curiosity, or with less consideration for his feelings 
than did a woman of fifty scrutinize mine, standing close 
in front, not two feet distant, even bending forward as I 
sat upon a bench writing at the railway station. People 
would pass their hands along my coat sleeve to judge the 
cloth, and a boy felt of my shoes. Walking through the 
street we passed many groups gathered about tables and 
upon seats, visiting or in business conference, their fingers 
occupied with watermelon seeds or with packages of cooked 
snails. Along the pathway leading to the pagoda beggars 
had distributed themselves, one in a place, at intervals of 
two or three hundred feet, asking alms, most of them in- 
firm with age or in some other way physically disabled. "We 
saw but one who appeared capable of earning a living. 

Travel between Shanghai and Hangchow at this time was 
heavy. Three companies were running trains, of six or 
more houseboats, each towed by a steam launch, and these 
were daily crowded with passengers. Our train left Shang- 
hai at 4 :30 P. M., reaching Hangchow at 5 :30 P. M. the fol- 
lowing day, covering a distance along the canal of some- 
thing more than 117 miles. We paid $5.16, gold, for the 
exclusive use of a first-cabin, five-berth stateroom for my- 
self and intepreter. It occupied the full width of the boat, 
lacking about fourteen inches of footway, and could be en- 
tered from either side down a flight of five steps. The 
berths were flat, naked wooden shelves thirty inches wide, 
separated . by a partition headboard six inches high and 
without railing in front. Each traveler provided his own 
bedding. A small table upon which meals were served, a 
mirror on one side and a lamp on the other, set in an open- 
ing in the partition, permitting it to serve two staterooms, 
completed the furnishings. The roof of the staterooms was 
covered with an awning and divided crosswise into two 
tiers of berths, each thirty inches wide, by board parti- 



Houseboat Train. 177 

tions six inches high. In these sections passengers spread 
their beds, sleeping heads together, separated only by a 
headboard six inches high. The awning was only suffi- 
ciently high to permit passengers to sit erect. Ventilation 
was ample but privacy was nil. Curtains could be dropped 
around the sides in stormy weather. 

Meals were served to each passenger wherever he might 
be. Dinner consisted of hot steamed rice brought in very 
heavy porcelain bowls set inside a covered, wet, steaming 
hot wooden case. With the rice were tiny dishes, butter- 
chip size, of green clover, nicely cooked and seasoned; of 
cooked bean curd served with shredded bamboo sprouts ; of 
tiny pork strips with bean curd ; of small bits of liver with 
bamboo sprouts; of greens, and hot water for tea. If the 
appetite is good one may have a second helping of rice and 
as much hot water for tea as desired. There was no table- 
linen, no napkins and everything but the tea had to be 
negotiated with chop sticks, or, these failing, with the fin- 
gers. When the meal was finished the table was cleared and 
water, hot if desired, was brought for your hand basin,, 
which with tea, teacup and bedding, constitute part of the- 
traveler's outfit. At frequent intervals, up to ten P. M., 
a crier walked about the deck with hot water for those who 
might desire an extra cup of tea, and again in the early 
morning. 

At this season of the year Chinese incubators were being 
run to their full capacity and it was our good fortune to 
visit one of these, escorted by Rev. R. A. Haden, who also 
acted as interpreter. The art of incubation is very old and 
very extensively practiced in China. An interior view of 
one of these establishments is shown in Fig. 96, where the 
family were hatching the eggs of hens, ducks and geese, 
purchasing the eggs and selling the young as hatched. As 
in the case of so many trades in China, this family was 
the last generation of a long line whose lives had been 
spent in the same work. We entered through their store, 
opening on the street of the narrow village seen in Pig. 10. 
In the store the eggs were purchased and the chicks were 
12 



178 



Tramps Afield. 



sold, this work being in charge of the women of the family. 
It was in the extreme rear of the home that thirty incu- 
bators were installed, all doing duty and each having a 
capacity of 1,200 hens' eggs. Four of these may be seen 
in the illustration and one of the baskets which, when 
two-thirds filled with eggs, is set inside of each incubator. 
Each incubator consists of a large earthenware jar hav- 
ing a door cut in one side through which live charcoal may 




Pig. 96. — Four Cbinese incubators in a room where there are thirty, each 
having a capacity of 1,200 hens' eggs. 



be introduced and the fire partly smothered under a layer 
of ashes, this seiT^ing as the source of heat. The jar is 
thoroughly insulated, cased in basketwork and provided 
with a cover, as seen in the illustration. Inside the outer 
jar rests a second of nearly the same size, as one teacup 
may in another. Into this is lowered the large basket with 
its 600 hens' eggs, 400 ducks' eggs or 175 geese' eggs, as 
the case may be. Thirty of these incubators were arranged 
in two parallel rows of fifteen each. Immediately above 
each row, and utilizing the warmth of the air rising from 
them, was a continuous line of finishing hatchers and brood- 
ers in the form of woven shallow trays with sides warmly 



Incubators. 179 

padded with cotton and with the tops covered with sets of 
quilts of different thickness. 

After a basket of hens ' eggs has been incubated four days 
it is removed and the eggs examined by lighting, to remove 
those which are infertile before they have been rendered 
unsalable. The infertile eggs go to the store and the basket 
is returned to the incubator. Ducks' eggs are similarly 
examined after two days and again after five days incuba- 
tion; and geese' eggs after six days and again after four- 
teen days. Through these precautions practically all loss 
from infertile eggs is avoided and from 95 to 98 per cent 
of the fertile eggs are hatched, the infertile eggs ranging 
from 5 to 25 per cent. 

After the fourth day in the incubator all eggs are turned 
five times in twentj'-four hours. Hens' eggs are kept in the 
lower incubator eleven days; ducks' eggs thirteen days, and 
geese' eggs sixteen days, after which they are transferred 
to the trays. Throughout the incubation period the most 
careful watch and control is kept over the temperature. No 
thermometer is used but the operator raises the lid or quilt, 
removes an egg, pressing the large end into the eye socket. 
In this way a large contact is made where the skin is sen- 
sitive, nearly constant in temperature, but little below blood 
heat and from which the air is excluded for the time. Long 
practice permits them thus to judge small difEerences of 
temperature expeditiously and with great accuracy ; and 
they maintain different temperatures during different 
stages of the incubation. The men sleep in the room and 
some one is on duty continuously, making the rounds of 
the incubators and brooders, examining and regulating 
each according to its individual needs, through the man- 
agement of the doors or the shifting of the quilts over the 
eggs in the brooder trays where the chicks leave the eggs 
and remain until they go to the store. In the finishing 
trays the eggs form rather more than one continuous layer 
but the second layer does not cover more than a fifth or 
a quarter of the area. Hens' eggs are in these trays 
ten days, ducks' and geese' eggs, fourteen days. 



180 Tramps Afield. 

After the chickens have been hatched sufficiently long 
to require feeding they are ready for market and are then 
sorted according to sex and placed in separate shallow 
woven trays thirty inches in diameter. The sorting is 
done rapidly and accurately through the sense of touch, 
the operator recognizing the sex by gently pinching the 
anus.- Four trays of young chickens were in the store 
fronting on the street as we entered and several women 
were making purchases, taking five to a dozen each. Dr. 
Haden informed me that nearly every family in the cities, 
and in the country villages raise a few, but only a few, 
chickens and it is a common sight to see grown chickens 
walking about the narrow streets, in and out of the open 
stores, dodging the feet of the occupants and passers by. 
At the time of our visit this family was paying at the 
rate of ten cents, Mexican, for nine hens' and eight ducks' 
eggs, and were selling their largest strong chickens at 
three cents each. These figures, translated into our cur- 
rency, make the purchase price for eggs nearly 48 cents, 
and the selling price for the young chicks $1.29, per hun- 
dred, or thirteen eggs for six cents and seven chickens for 
nine cents. 

It is difficult even to conceive, not to say measure, the 
vast import of this solution of how to maintain, in the mil- 
lions of homes, a constantly accessible supply of absolutely 
fresh and thoroughly sanitary animal food in the form of 
meat and eggs. The great density of population in these 
countries makes the problem of supplying eggs to the peo- 
ple very different from that in the United States. Our 
250,600,000 fowl in 1900 was at the rate of three to 
each person but in Japan, with her 16,500,000 fowl, she 
had in 1906 but one for every three people. Her number 
per square mile of cultivated land however was 825, while 
in the United States, in 1900, the number of fowls per 
square mile of improved farm land was but 387. To give 
to Japan three fowls to each person there would needs be 
an average of about nine to each acre of her cultivated 
land, whereas in the United States there were in 1900 



Eggs for tlie Millions. 



181 



nearly two acres of improved farm land for each fowl. 
We have no statistics regarding the number of fowl in 
China or the number of eggs produced but the total is 
very large and she exports to Japan. The large boat load 
of eggs seen in Fig, 97 had just arrived from the coun- 
try, coming into Shanghai in one of her canals. 

Besides applying canal mud directh' to the fields in the 
ways described there are other verv' extensive practices of 
composting it with organic matter of one or another kind 




Fig. 97. — Boatload of 150 baskets of eggs on Sooehow creek, Shanghai, China. 



and of then using the compost on the fields. The next 
three illustrations show some of the steps and something 
of the tremendous labor of body, willingly and cheerfully 
incurred, and something of the forethought practiced, that 
homes may be maintained and that grandparents, parents, 
wives and children need neither starve nor beg. We had 
reached a place seen in Fig. 98, where eight bearers were 
moving winter compost to a recently excavated pit in an 
adjoining field shown in Fig. 99. 

Four months before the camera fixed the activity shown, 
men had brought waste from the stables of Shanghai fifteen 
miles by water, depositing it upon the canal bank between 



182 



Tramps Afield. 



layers of thin mud dipped from the canal, and left it to 
ferment. The eight men were removing this compost to 
the pit seen in Fig. 99, then nearly filled. Near by in the 
same field was a second pit seen in Fig. 100, excavated 
three feet deep and rimmed about with the earth removed, 
making it two feet deeper. 



M 


■■ 


1 


1 






4 


m^' 




1 






""^^-■■-^■' ''"Sr'.^l;*?^4^"'^ 




:■?,,. ,;,;.,:>-j|^^ 




0: 

i 





Pig. 98.— Eight bearers moving a pile of winter compost to the recently 
excavated pit in the field seen in Fig. 99. The boatload in the foreground 
is a mixture of manure and ashes just arrived from the home village. 



After these pits had been filled the clover which was in 
blossom beyond the pits would be cut and stacked upon 
them to a hight of five to eight feet and this also saturated, 
layer by layer, with mud brought from the canal, and al- 
lowed to ferment twenty to thirty days until the juices 
set free had been absorbed by the winter compost beneath, 
helping to carry the ripening of that still further, and until 
the time had arrived for fitting the ground for the next 
crop. This organic matter, fermented with the canal nnid, 
would then be distributed by the men over the field, car- 
ried a third time on their shoulders, notwithstanding its 
weight was many tons. 



Mud and Clover Compost. 



183 




184 



Tramps Afield. 




1^ ^ 












Mud and Clover Compost. 



185 



This manure had been collected, loaded and carried fif- 
teen miles by water; it had been unloaded upon the bank 
and saturated with canal mud ; the field had been fitted for 
clover the previous fall and seeded ; the pits had been dug 
in the fields; the winter compost had been carried and 
placed in the pits; the clover was to be cut, carried by the 
men on their shoulders, stacked layer by layer and saturat- 
ed with mud dipped from the canal ; the whole would later 
be distributed over the field and finally the earth removed 
from the pits would be returned to them, that the service 





ys^^^^ 


gnjJTJISwgs' 


«|J 


* -x*r*v»' t «T«ir — 


W^ 

2 











Pig. 101.— Providing for the tuilding of a mud-and-clover compost stack. 



of no ground upon which a crop might grow should be 
lost. 

Such are the tasks to which Chinese farmers hold them- 
selves, because they are convinced desired results will fol- 
low, because their holdings are so small and their families 
so large. These practices are so extensive in China and 
so fundamental in the part they play in the maintenance 
of high productive power in their soils that we made spe- 
cial effort to follow them through difi'erent phases. In Fig. 
101 we saw the preparation being made to build one of 
the clover compost stacks saturated with canal mud. On 
the left the thin mud had been dipped from the canal; 
way-farers in the center were crossing the foot-bridge of the 



186 



Tmmps Afield. 




Mud and Clover Compost. 



187 



country l}y-way ; and beyond rises the conical thatch to 
shelter the water buffalo when pumping for irrigating the 
rice crop to be fed with this plant food in preparation. On 
the right were two large piles of green clover freshly cut 
and a woman of the family at one of them was spreading 
it to receive the mud, while the men-folk were coming from 
the field with more clover on their carrying poles. We 
came upon this scene just before the dinner hour and after 




rig. 103. — The young man is loading tlis boat witll canal mud, using the long- 
handled clam sl^ejl dredjfe which he can open and close at will. 



the workers had left another photograph was taken at 
closer range and from a different side, giving the view seen 
in Fig. 102. The mud had been removed some days and 
become too stiff to spread, so water was l)eing brought from 
the canal in the pails at the right for reducing its con- 
sistency to that of a thin porridge, permitting it to more 
completely smear and saturate the clover. The stack 
grew, layer by layer, each saturated with the mud, tramped 
solid with the bare feet, trousers rolled high. Provision 
had been made here for building four other stacks. 

Further along we came upon the scene in Fig. 103 where 



188 



Tinrnps Afield. 



the building of the stack of compost and the gathering of 
the mud from the canal were simultaneous. On one side 
of the canal the son, using a clam-shell form of dipper 
made of basket-work, which could be opened and shut with 
a pair of bamboo handles, had nearly filled the middle sec- 
tion of his boat with the thin ooze, while on the other side, 
against the stack which was building, the mother was 
emptying a similar boat, using a large dipper, also pro- 
vided with a bamboo handle. The man on the stack is a 
good scale for judging its size. 



'■U^^JfKtt. .. 




'Fig. 104. — A completed compost stack. 



We came next upon a finished stack on the bank of 
another canal, shown in Fig. 104, where our umbrella was 
set to serve as a scale. This stack measured ten by ten 
feet on the ground, was six feet high and must have con- 
tained more than twenty tons of the green compost. At 
the same place, two other stacks had been started, each 
about fourteen by fourteen feet, and foundations were laid 
for six others, nine in all. 

During twenty or more days this green nitrogenous or- 
ganic matter is permitted to lie fermenting in contact with 
the fine soil particles of the ooze with which it had been 



A Remarkable Practice. 189 

charged. This is a remarkable practice in that it is a very 
old, intensive application of an important fundamental 
principle only recently understood and added to the science 
of agriculture, namelj^ the power of organic matter, de- 
caying rapidly in contact with soil, to liberate from it 
soluble plant food ; and so it would be a great mistake to 
say that these laborious practices are the result of ignor- 
ance, of a lack of capacity for accurate thinking or of 
power to grasp and utilize. If the agricultural lands of the 
United States are ever called upon to feed even 1200 mil- 
lions of people, a number proportionately less than one- • 
half that being fed in Japan today, very different practices 
from those we are now following will have been adopted. 
We can believe they will require less human bodily effort 
and be more efficient. But the knowledge which can make 
them so is not yet in the possession of our farmers, much 
less the conviction that plant feeding and more persistent 
and better directed soil management are necessary to such 
yields as will then be required. 

Later, just before the time for transplanting rice, we re- 
turned to the same district to observe the manner of ap- 
plying this compost to the field, and Fig. 105 is prepared 
from photographs taken then, illustrating the activities of 
one family, as seen during the morning of May 28th. Their 
home was in a near-by village and their holding was divid- 
ed into four nearly rectangular paddies, graded to water 
level, separated by raised rims, and having an area of 
nearly two acres. Three of these little fields are partly 
shown in the illustration, and the fourth in Pig. 160. In 
the background of the upper section of Fig. 105, and under 
the thatched shelter, was a native Chinese cow, blindfolded 
and hitched to the power-wheel of a large wooden-chain 
pump, lifting water from the canal and flooding the field 
in the foreground, to soften the soil for plowing. Riding 
on the power-wheel was a girl of some twelve years, another 
of seven and a baby. They were there for entertainment 
and to see that the cow kept at work. The ground had 
been sufBciently softened so that the father had begun 



190 Tramps Afield. 

plowing, the cow sinking to her knees as she walked. In 
the same paddy, but shown in the section below, a boy was 
spreading the clover compost with his hands, taking 
care that it was finely divided and evenly scattered. He 
had been once around before the plowing began. This 
compost had been brought from a stack by the side of a 
canal, and two other men were busy still bringing the 
material to one of the other paddies, one of whom, with 
his baskets on the carrying pole appears in the third 
section. Between these two paddies was the one seen at 
the bottom of the illustration, which had matured a crop 
of rape that had been pulled and was lying in swaths 
ready to be moved. Two other men were busy here, gath- 
ering the rape into large bundles and carrying it to the 
village home, where the women were threshing out the 
seed, taking care not to break the stems which, after thresh- 
ing, were tied into bundles for fuel. The seed would be 
ground and from it an oil expressed, while the cake would 
be used as a fertilizer. 

This crop of rape is remarkable for the way it fits into 
the economies of these people. It is a near relative of 
mustard and cabbage ; it grows rapidly during the cooler 
portions of the season, the spring crop ripening before 
the planting of rice and cotton ; its young shoots and 
leaves are succulent, nutritious, readily digested and ex- 
tensively used as human food, boiled and eaten fresh, or 
salted for winter use, to be served with rice ; the mature 
stems, being woody, make good fuel; and it bears a heavy 
crop of seed, rich in oil, which has been extensively used 
for lights and in cooking, while the rape seed cake is highly 
prized as a manure and very extensively so used. 

In the early spring the country is luxuriantly green with 
the large acreage of rape, later changing to a sea of most 
brilliant yellow and finally to an ashy grey when the leaves 
fall and the stems and pods ripen. Like the dairy cow, 
rape produces a fat, in the ratio of about forty pounds of 
oil to a hundred pounds of seed, which may be eaten, 
burned or sold without materially robbing the soil of. its 



Preparing for the Bice. 



191 




T^^^r ^■^^i-^4^^,iim^i.^i 




Fig. 105,— The activities ol a family, lertilizing and fitting paddies lor rice. 



192 Tramps Afield. 

fertility if the cake and the ashes from the stems are re- 
turned to the fields, the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen of 
which the oil is almost wholly composed coming from the 
atmosphere rather than from the soil. 

In Japan rape is grown as a second crop on both the 
upland and paddy fields, and in 1906 she produced more 
than 5,547,000 bushels of the seed; $1,845,000 worth of 
rape seed cake, importing enough more to equal a total 
value of $2,575,000, all of which was used as a fertilizer, 
the oil being exported. The yield of seed per acre in 
Japan ranges between thirteen and sixteen bushels, and 
the farmer whose field was photographed estimated that 
his returns from the crop would be at the rate of 640 
pounds of seed per acre, worth $6.19, and 8,000 pounds 
of stems worth as fuel $5.16 per acre. 



IX. 
THE UTILIZATION OF WASTE. 



One of the most remarkable agricultural practices 
adopted by any civilized people is the centuries-long and 
well nigh universal conservation and utilization of all 
human waste in China, Korea and Japan, turning it to 
marvelous account in the maintenance of soil fertility 
and in the production of food. To understand this evolu- 
tion it must be recognized that mineral fertilizers so ex- 
tensively employed in modem western agriculture, like 
the extensive use of mineral coal, had been a physical 
impossibility to all people alike until within very recent 
years. With this fact must be associated the very long 
unbroken life of these nations and the vast numbers their 
farmers have been compelled to feed. 

When we reflect upon the depleted fertility of our own 
older farm lands, comparatively few of which have seen a 
century's service, and upon the enormous quantity of min- 
eral fertilizers which are being applied annually to them 
in order to secure paying yields, it becomes evident that 
the time is here when profound consideration should be 
given to the practices the Mongolian race has maintained 
through many centuries, which permit it to be said of 
China that one-sixth of an acre of good land is ample for 
the maintenance of one person, and which are feeding an 
average of three people per acre of farm land in the three 
southernmost of the four main islands of Japan. 

From the analyses of mixed human excreta made by 
Wolff in Europe and by Kellner in Japan it appears that, 
13 



194 The Utilization of Waste. 

as an average, these carry in every 2000 pounds 12.7 
pounds of nitrogen, 4 pounds of potassium and 1.7 pounds 
of phosphorus. On this basis and that of Carpenter, who 
estimates the average amount of excreta per day for the 
adult at 40 ounces, the average annual production per 
million of adult population is 5,794,300 pounds of nitro- 
gen ; 1,825,000 pounds of potassium, and 775,600 pounds of 
phosphorus carried in 456,250 tons of excreta. The figures 
which Hall cites in Fertilizers and Manures, would make 
these amounts 7,940,000 pounds of nitrogen; 3,070,500 
pounds of potassium, and 1,965,600 pounds of phosphorus, 
but the figures he takes and calls high averages give 
12,000,000 of nitrogen ; 4,151,000 pounds of potassium, and 
3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus. 

In 1908 the International Concessions of the city of 
Shanghai sold to one Chinese contractor for $31,000, gold, 
the privilege of collecting 78,000 tons of human waste, 
under stipulated regulations, and of removing it to the 
country for sale to farmers. The flotilla of boats seen in 
Fig. 106 is one of several engaged daily in Shanghai 
throughout the year in this service. 

Dr. Kawaguehi, of the National Department of Agricul- 
ture and Commerce, taking his data from their records, 
informed us that the human manure saved and applied 
to the fields of Japan in 1908 amounted to 23,850,295 tons, 
which is an average of 1.75 tons per acre of their 21,321 
square miles of cultivated land in their four main islands. 

On the basis of the data of "Wolff, Kellner and Carpen- 
ter, or of Hall, the people of the United States and of 
Europe are pouring into the sea, lakes or rivers and into 
the underground waters from 5,794,300 to 12,000,000 
pounds of nitrogen; 1,881,900 to 4,151,000 pounds of 
potassium, and 777,200 to 3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus 
per million of adult population annually, and this waste 
we esteem one of the great achievements of our civilization. 
In the Far East, for more than thirty centxiries, these enor- 
mous wastes have been religiously saved and today the 
four hundred million of adult population send back to 
their fields annually 150,000 tons of phosphorus; 376,000 



Night Soil. 



195 




O > 



196 



Tlte Utilization of Waste. 



tons of potassium, and 1,158,000 tons of nitrogen comprised 
in a gross weight exceeding 182 million tons, gathered 
from every home, from the country villages and from the 
great cities like Hankow-Wuchang-Hanyang with its 




Pig. 107. — Map of country surrounding Shanghai, China, showing a few of the 
many canals on which the waste of the city is conveyed by boat to the 
farms. 



1,770,000 people swarming on a land area delimited by 
a radius of four miles. 

Man is the most extravagant accelerator of waste the 
world has ever endured. His withering blight has fallen 
upon every living thing within his reach, himself not 



Western Waste. 



197 



excepted ; and his besom of destruction in the uncontrolled 
hands of a generation has swept into the sea soil fertility 
which only centuries of life could accumulate, and yet 
this fertility is the substratum of all that is living. It 
must be recognized that the phosphate deposits which we 
are beginning to return to our fields are but measures of 
fertility lost from older soils, and indices of processes 




Tig. 108. — Type of conveyance extensively used In Japan for the removal of 
city and village waste. Such carts are even more frequently drawn by men 
than by cattle or horses, and tightly covered casks supported on saddles 
are borne on the backs of both cattle and horses, while men carry palla 
long distances on their shoulders, using the carrying pole. 



still in progress. The rivers of North America are esti- 
mated to carry to the sea more than 500 tons of phosphorus 
with each cubic mile of water. To such loss modem 
civilization is adding that of hydraulic sewage disposal 
through which the waste of five hundred millions of people 
might be more than 194,300 tons of phosphorus annually, 
which could not be replaced by 1,295,000 tons of rock 
phosphate, 75 per cent pure. The Mongolian races, with 



198 The Utilization of Waste. 

a population now approaching the figure named ; occupy- 
ing an area little more than one-half that of the United 
States, tilling less than 800,000 square miles of land, 
and much of this during twenty, thirty or perhaps forty 
centuries; unable to avail themselves of mineral fertilizers, 
could not survive and tolerate such waste. Compelled to 
solve the problem of avoiding such wastes, and exercising 
the faculty which is characteristic of the race, they "cast 
down their buckets where they were", as 

* A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly 
vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel v?as seen a sig- 
nal, "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the 
friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket where 
you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; Send us 
water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, 
"Cast down your bucKet where you are." And a third and 
fourth signal for water was answered, "Cast down your bucket 
where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last 
heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up 
full of fresh sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon 
river. 

Not even in great cities like Canton, built in the meshes 
of tideswept rivers and canals ; like Hankow on the banks 
of one of the largest rivers in the world ; nor yet in modern 
Shanghai, Yokohama or Tokyo, is such waste permitted. 
To them such a practice has meant race suicide and they 
have resisted the temptation so long that it has ceased to 
exist. 

Dr. Arthur Stanley, Health officer of the city of Shang- 
hai, in his annual report for 1899, considering this subject 
as a municipal problem, wrote : 

"Regarding the bearing on the sanitation of Shanghai of the 
relationship between Eastern and Western hygiene, it may be 
said, that if prolonged national life is indicative of sound sanita- 
tion, the Chinese are a race worthy of study by all who concern 
themselves with Public Health. Even without the returns of a 
Registrar-General it is evident that in China the birth rate must 
very considerably exceed the death rate, and have done so in an 
average way during the three or four thousand years that the 
Chinese nation has existed. Chinese hygiene, when compared 
with medieval English, appears to advantage. The main problem 



•Booker T. Washington, Atlanta address. 



Chinese Hygiene. 



199 



of sanitation is to cleanse the dwelling day by day, and if this 
can be done at a profit so much the better. While the ultra- 
civilized Western elaborates destructors for burning garbage at a 
financial loss and turns sewage into the sea, the Chinaman uses 
both for manure. He wastes nothing while the sacred duty of 
agriculture is uppermost in his mind. And in reality recent bac- 
terial work has shown that faecal matter and house refuse are 
best destroyed by returning them to clean soil, where natural 
purification takes place. The question of destroying garbage can, 
I think, under present conditions in Shanghai, be answered in a 
decided negative. Wliile to adopt the water-carriage system for 
sewage and turn it into the river, whence the water supply is de- 
rived, would be an act of sanitary suicide. It is best, therefore, 
to make use of what is good in Chinese hygiene, which demands 
respect, being, as it is, the product of an evolution extending 
from more than a thousand years before the Christian era." 



'^^^A^Sl^^^'^-Ki 




^^M 


-. -.^rp^ji '^^^Sf^;'! «*^ 






mmmm 


■ '". , .^gpirsQl 




IPK^^|!^\ /---v.;; 






"""^^^^s^'^^CSfc^ 


;:'%*d,:^i^^; 


uki^'i.^ '■■ r^^?5fc^^Ailli* 


IpI'-'?'-' ' 


■J^r^^f^ 


1 ■■ •■.#^^-..:o^-^ 


W:'^ 


(■•-i'-:.-'."iS: %-'- 



Fig. 109.— Receptacles for human waste. 



The storage of such \va.ste in Cliina is largely in stone- 
ware receptacles such as are seen in Pig. 109, which are 
hard-bnmed, glazed terra-cotta urns, having capacities 
ranging from 500 to 1000 pounds. Japan more often uses 
sheltered cement-lined pits sucli as are seen in Fig. 110. 

In the three countries the carrying to the tields is often 



200 



The Utilization of Waste. 



est in some form of pail, as seen in Fig. Ill, a pair of 
which are borne swinging from the carrying pole. In 
applying the liquid to the field or garden the long handle 
dipper is used, seen in Fig. 112. 

We are beginning to husband with some economy the 
waste from our domestic animals but in this we do not 
approach that of China, Korea and Japan. People in 
China regularly search for and collect droppings along the 
country and caravan roads. Repeatedly, when walking 




Pig. no. — Japanese sheltered cement-lined storage pits for liquid manure. 



through city streets, we observed such materials quickly 
and apparently eagerly gathered, to be carefully stored 
under conditions which ensure small loss from either leach- 
ing or unfavorable fermentation. In some mulberry 
orchards visited the earth had been carefully hoed back 
about the trunks of trees to a depth of three or four inches 
from a circle having a diameter of six to eight feet, and 
upon these areas were placed the droppings of silkworms, 
the moulted skins, together with the bits of leaves and 
stem left after feeding. Some disposition of such waste 
must be made. They return at once to the orchard all 



Chinese Saving. 



201 



but the silk produced from the leaves; unnecessary loss 
is thus avoided and the material enters at once the service 
of forcing the next crop of leaves. 

On the farm of Mrs. Wu, near Kashing, while studjdng 
the operation of two irrigation pumps driven by two cows, 
lifting water to flood her twenty-five acres of rice field 
preparatory to transplanting, we were surprised to observe 




Pig. lU.— Six carrying pails such as are used in dlstrilrating liquid manure to 

the fields. 

that one of the duties of the lad who had charge of the 
animals was to use a sis-quart wooden dipper with a bam- 
boo handle six feet long to collect all excreta, before they 
fell upon the ground, and transfer them to a receptacle 
provided for the purpose. There came a flash of resent- 
ment that such a task was set for the lad, for we were 
only beginning to realize to what lengths the practice of 
economy may go, but there was nothing irksome suggested 
in the boy's face. He performed the duty as a matter of 
course and as we thought it through there was no reason 
why it should have been otherwise. In fact, the only 



202 



TIte Utilization of Waste. 



right course was being taken. Conditions would have 
been worse if the collection had not been made. It made 
possible more rice. Character of substantial quality was 
building in the lad which meant thrift in the growing man 
and continued life for the nation. 

We have adverted to the very small number of flies 
observed anywhere in the course of our travel, but its 




5«^?fc 






^^m^ 



■^■>**. 







Fig. 



112. — Applying of liquid manure from carrying pails, using the long- 
handle dipper. 



significance we did not realize until near the end of our 
stay. Indeed, for some reason, flies were more in evidence 
during the first two days on the steamship, out from 
Yokohama on our return trip to America, than at any 
time before on our .journey. It is to be expected that 
the eternal vigilance which seizes every waste, once it has 
become such, putting it in places of usefulness, must con- 
tribute much toward the destruction of breeding places, 
and it may be these nations have been mindful of the 
wholesomeness of their practice and that many phases of 
the evolution of their waste disposal system have been 



Beturns frum Saving. 203 

dictated by and held fast to through a clear conception 
of sanitary needs. 

]\luch intelligence and the highest skill are exhibited by 
these old-world farmers in the use of their wastes. In Fig. 
113 is one of many examples which might be cited. The 
man walking down the row with his manure pails swing- 
ing from his shoulders informed us on his return that in 
his household there were twenty to be fed ; that from this 
garden of half an acre of land he usually sold a product 
bringing in $400. Mexican. — $172, gold. The crop was 
cucumbers in groups of two rows thirty inches apart 
and twenty-four inches between the groups. The plants 
were eight to ten inches apart in the row. He had 
just marketed the last of a crop of greens which 
occupied the space between the rows of cucumbers 
seen under the strong, durable, light and very readily 
removable trellises. On ]\Iay 28 the vines were be- 
ginning to run, so not a minute had been lost in 
the change of crop. On the contrary this man had 
added a month to his growing season by over-lapping 
his crops, and the trellises enabled him to feed more plants 
of this type than there was room for vines on the ground. 
"With ingenuity and much labor he had made his half acre 
for cucumbers equivalent to more than two. He had 
removed the vines entirely from the ground ; had provided 
a travel space two feet wide, down which he was walking, 
and he had made it possible to work about the roots of 
every plant for the purpose of hoeing and feeding. Four 
acres of cucumbers handled by American ileld methods 
would not yield more than this man's one. and he grows 
besides two ofher crops the same season. The difference is 
not so much in activity of muscle as it is in alertness 
and efficiency of the grey matter of the brain. He sees 
and treats each plant individually, he loosens the ground 
so that his liquid manure drops immediately beneath the 
surface within reach of the active roots. If the rainfall 
has been scanty and the soil is dry he may use ten of 
water to two of night soil, not to supply water but to make 



204 



The Utilization of Waste. 




Angleworms. 205 

certain sufficiently deep penetration. If the weather is 
rainy and the soil over wet, the food is applied more con- 
centrated, not to lighten the burden but to avoid waste 
bj' leaching and over saturation. While ever crowding 
growth he never overfeeds. Forethought, after-thought and 
the mind focussed on the work in hand are characteristic 
of these people. We do not recall to have seen a man 
smoking while at work. They enjoy smoking, but prefer 
to do this also with the attention undivided and thus get 
more for their money. 

On another date earlier in May we were walking in the 
fields without an interpreter. For half an hour we stood 
watching an old gardener fitting the soil with his spading 
hoe in the manner seen in Fig. 26, wliere the graves of 
his ancestors occupy a part of the land. Angleworms 
were extremely numerous, as large around as an ordinary 
lead pencil and, when not extended, two-thirds as long, 
decidedly greenish in color. Nearly every stroke of the 
spade e.xposed two to five of these worms but so far as we 
observed, and we watched the man closelj', pulverizing 
the soil, he neither injured nor left uncovered a single 
worm. While he seemed to make no effort to avoid injuring 
them or to cover them with earth, and while we could not 
talk with him, we are convinced that his action was con- 
tinually guarded against injuring the worms. They cer- 
tainly were subsoiling his garden deeply and making possi- 
ble a freer circulation of air far below the surface. Their 
great abundance proved a high content of organic matter 
present in the soil and, as the worms ate their way through 
it, passing the soil through their bodies, the yearly volume 
of work done by them was very great. In the fields flooded 
preparatory to fitting them for rice these worms are forced 
to the surface in enormous numbers and large flocks of 
ducks are taken to such fields to feed upon them. 

In another field a crop of barley was nearing maturity. 
An adjacent strip of land was to be fitted and planted. 
The leaning barley heads were in the way. Not one must 
be lost and every inch of ground must be put to use. The 



206 The Utilization of Waste. 

grain along the margin, for a breadth, of sixteen inches, 
had been gathered into handfuls and skillfully tied, each 
with an unpulled barley stem, without breaking the straw, 
thus permitting even the grains in that head to fill and 
be gathered with the rest, while the tying set all straws 
well aslant, out of the way, and permitted the last inch 
of naked ground to be fitted without injuring the grain. 

In still another instance a man was growing Irish pota- 
toes to market when yet small. He had enriched his soil ; 
he would apply water if the rains were not timelj^ and 
sufficient, and had fed the plants. He had planted in rows 
only twelve to fourteen inches apart with a hill every 
eight inches in the row. The vines stood strong, straight, 
fourteen inches high and as even as a trimmed hedge. The 
leaves and stems were turgid, the deepest green and as 
prime and glossy as a prize steer. So close were the plants 
that there was leaf surface to intercept the sunshine falling 
on every square inch of the patch. There were no potato 
beetles and we saw no signs of injury but the gardener 
was scanning the patch with the eye of a robin. He spied 
the slightest first drooping of leaves in a stem ; went after 
the difficulty and brought and placed in our hand a cut- 
worm, a young tuber the size of a marble and a stem cut 
half off, which he was willing to sacrifice because oi our 
evident interest. But the two friends who had met were 
held apart by the babel of tongues. 

Nothing is costing the world more; has made so many 
enemies, and has so much hindered the forming of friend- 
ships as the inability to fully understand ; hence the dove 
that brings world peace must fly on the wings of a common 
language, and the bright star in the east is world com- 
merce, rising on rapidly developing railway and steam- 
ship lines, heralded and directed by electric communication. 
With world commerce must come mutual confidence and 
friendship requiring a full understanding and therefore a 
common tongue. Then world peace will be permanently 
assured. It is coming inevitably and faster than we think. 
Once this desired end is seriously sought, the carrying of 



Askes Used. 207 

three generations of children through the public schools 
where the world language is taught together with the 
mother tongue, and the passing of the parents and grand- 
parents, would effect the change. 

The important point regarding these Far East people, 
to which attention should be directed, is that effective think- 
ing, clear and strong, prevails among the farmers who 
have fed and are still feeding the dense populations from 
the products of their limited areas. This is further indi- 
cated in the universal and extensive use of plant ashes 
derived from fuel grown upon cultivated fields and upon 
the adjacent hill and mountain lands. 

We were unable to secure exact data regarding the 
amount of fuel burned annually in these countries, and 
of ashes used as fertilizer, but a cord of dry oak wood 
weighs about 3500 pounds, and the weight of fuel used in 
the home and in manufactures must exceed that of two 
cords per household. Japan has an average of 5.563 people 
per family. If we allow but 1300 pounds of fuel per 
capita, Japan's consumption would be 31,200,000 tons. 
In view of the fact that a very large share of the fuel 
used in these countries is either agricultural plant stems, 
with an average ash content of 5 per cent, or the twigs 
and even leaves of trees, as in the case of pine bough fuel, 
4.5 per cent of ash may be taken as a fair estimate. On 
this basis, and with a content of phosphorus equal to .5 
per cent, and of potassium equal to 5 per cent, the fuel 
ash for Japan would amount to 1,404,000 tons annually, 
carrying 7020 tons of phosphorus and 70,200 tons of 
potassium, together with more than 400,000 tons of lime- 
stone, which is returned annuallj' to less than 21,231 
square miles of cultivated land. 

In China, with her more than four hundred millions of 
people, a similar rate of fuel consumption would make the 
phosphorus and potassium returned to her fields more than 
eight times the amounts computed for Japan. On the 
basis of these statements Japan's annual saving of phos- 
phorus from the waste of her fuel would be equivalent to 



208 



The Utilization of Waste. 



more than 46,800 tons of rock phosphate having a purity 
of 75 per cent, or in the neighborhood of seven pounds 
per acre. If this amount, even with the potash and lime- 
stone added, appears like a trifling addition of fertility 
it is important for Americans to remember that even if 
this is so, these people have felt compelled to make the 
saving. 




Fig. 114. — Japanese farmer tramping green herbage for fertilizer into tlie 
water and mud between rows of rice. 



In the matter of returning soluble potassium to the culti- 
vated fields Japan would be applying with her ashes the 
equivalent of no less than 156,600 tons of pure potassium 
sulphate, equal to 23 pounds per acre ; while the lime car- 
bonate so applied annually would be some 62 pounds per 
acre. 

In addition to the forest lands, which have long been 
made to contribute plant food to the cultivated fields 
through fuel ashes, there are large areas which contribute 
green manure and compost material. These are chiefly hill 
lands, aggregating some twenty per cent of the cultivated 



Laborious Green Manuring. 209 

fields, which bear mostly herbaceous growth. Some 
2,552,741 acres of these lands may be cut over three times 
each season, yielding, in 1903, an average of 7980 pounds 
per acre. The first cutting of this hill herbage is mainly 
used on the rice fields as green manure, it being tramped 
into the mud between the rows after the manner seen in 
Fig. 114. 

This man had been with basket and sickle to gather green 
herbage wherever he could and had brought it to his rice 
paddy. The day in July was extremely sultry. We came 
upon him wading in the water half way to his knees, care- 
fully laying the herbage he had gathered between alternate 
rows of his rice, one handful in a place, with tips overlap- 
ping. This done he took the attitude seen in the illustra- 
tion and. gathering the materials into a compact bunch, 
pressed it beneath the surface with his foot. The two 
hands smoothed the soft mud over the grass and righted 
the disturbed spears of rice in the two ad,iaeent hills. Thus, 
foot following foot, one bare length ahead, the succeeding 
bunches of herbage were submerged until the last had been 
reached, following between alternate rows onlj^ a foot apart, 
there being a hill every nine to ten inches in the row and 
the hands grasping and being drawn over every one in 
the paddy. 

He was renting the land, paying therefor forty kan of 
rice per tan, and his usual yield was eighty kan. This is 
forty-four bushels of sixty pounds per acre. In unfavor- 
able seasons his yield might be less but still his rent would 
be forty kan per tan unless it was clear that he had done 
all that could reasonably be expected of him in securing 
the crop. It is difficult for Americans to understand how 
it is possible for the will of man, even when spurred by 
the love of home and family, to hold flesh to tasks like 
these. 

The second and third cuttings of herbage from the gori/ff 

lands in Japan are used for the preparation of compost 

applied on the dry-land fields in the fall or in the spring 

of the following season. Some of these lands arc pastured, 

14 



210 



The Utilization of Waste. 



hnt approximately 10,185,500 tons of green herbage grown 
and gathered from the hills contributes much of its organic 
matter and all of its ash to enrich the cultivated fields. 
Such wild growth areas in Japan are the commons of the 
near by villages, to which the people are freel.y admitted 
for the purpose of cutting the herbage. A fixed time may 




Fig. 115. — rather and childrtn returning from fiCniw Jands witli herbage for 
use as green manure or for making compost. The daughter carries the tea 
kettle to supply their safe, sanitary drink. 



lie set for cutting and a limit placed upon the amount 
which ma3^ be carried away, which is done in the manner 
seen in Fig. 115. It is well recognized b.y the people that 
this constant cutting and removal of growth from the hill 
lands, with no return, depletes the soils and reduces the 
amount of green herbage they are able to secure. 

Through the kindness of Dr. Daikuhara of the Imperial 
Agricultural Experiment Station at Tokyo we are able to 



Compost Fertilize^-. 211 

give the average composition of the green leaves and young 
stems of five of the most common wild species of plants 
cut for green manure in June. In each 1000 pounds the 
amount of water is 562.18 pounds; of organic matter, 
382.68 pounds; of ash, 55.14 pounds; nitrogen, 4.78 
pounds ; potassium, 2.407 pounds, and phosphorus, .34 
pound. On the basis of this composition and an aggregate 
yield of 10,185,500 tons, there would be annually applied 
to the cultivated fields 3463 tons of phosphorus and 24,516 
tons of potassium derived from the genya lands. 

In addition to this the run-off from both the mountain 
and the genya lands is largely used upon the rice fields, 
more than sixteen inches of water being applied annually 
to them in some prefectures. If such waters have the 
composition of river waters in North America, twelve inches 
of water applied to the rice fields of the three main islands 
would contribute no less than 1200 tons of phosphorus and 
19,000 tons of potassium annually. 

Dr. Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agricul- 
ture and Commerce, informed us that in 1908 Japanese 
farmers prepared and applied to their fields 22,812,787 tons 
of compost manufactured from the wastes of cattle, horses, 
swine and poultry, combined with herbage, straw and 
other similar wastes and with soil, sod or mud from ditches 
and canals. The amount of this compost is sufficient to 
appl.y 1.78 tons per acre of cultivated land of the southern 
three main islands. 

From data obtained at the Nara Experiment Station, 
the composition of compost as there prepared shows it to 
contain, in each 2000 pounds, 550 pounds of organic mat- 
ter ; 15.6 pounds of nitrogen; 8.3 pounds of potassium, 
and 5.24 pounds of phosphorus. On this basis 22,800,000 
tons of compost will carry 59,700 tons of phosphorus and 
94,600 tons of potassium. The construction of compost 
houses is illustrated in Fig. 116, reproduced from a large 
circular sent to farmers from the Nara Experiment Station, 
and an exterior of one at the Nara Station is given in 
Fig. 117. 



212 



The Utilization of Waste 



This compost house is designed to serve two and a half 
acres. Its floor is twelve by eighteen feet, rendered water- 
tight by a mixture of clay, lime and sand. The walls are 
of earth, one foot thick, and the roof is thatched with 
straw. Its capacity is sixteen to twenty tons, having a 



1 




t 



^ 


t [ 


^ 






— ^fl A+ .4 A i8 



t 



Fig. 116.— Section ol chart Issued by the Nara Experiment Station, Illustrat- 
ing construction ol compost Tiouse; upper section shows elevation; middle 
portion is a cross section and the lower shows floor plan. 

cash value of 60 yen, or $30. In preparing the stack, 
materials are brought daily and spread over one side of 
the compost floor until the pile has attained a hight of 
five feet. After one foot in depth has been laid and 
firmed, 1.2 inches of soil or mud is spread over the surface 
and the process repeated until full hight has been attained. 
Water is added sufficient to keep the whole saturated and 



Total Fertilizers Used. 



213 



to maintain tlie temperature below tliat of the body. After 
the compost stacks have been completed they are permitted 
to stand five weeks in summer, seven weeks in winter, when 
they are forked over and transferred to the opposite side 
of the house. 

If we state in round numbers the total nitrogen, phos- 
phorus and potassium thus far enumerated which Japanese 
farmers apply or return annuallj' to their twenty or 




Fig. 117. — E.xterior view of compost bouse at Nara Experiment Station. 



twenty-one thousand square miles of cultivated fields, the 
case stands 385,214 tons of nitrogen, 91,656 tons of phos- 
phorus and 255,778 tons of potassium. These values are 
only approximations and do not include the large volume 
and variety of fertilizers prepared from fish, which have 
long been used. Neither do they include the very large 
amount of nitrogen derived directly from the atmosphere 
through their long, extensive and persistent cultivation of 
soj' beans and other legumes. Indeed, from 1903 to 1906 
the average area of paddy field upon which was grown a 
second crop of green manure in the form of some legume 
was 6.8 per cent of the total area of such fields aggre- 
gating 11,000 square miles. In 1906 over 18 per cent of 
the upland fields also produced some leguminous crop, 



214 The Utilization of Waste. 

these fields aggregating between 9,000 and 10,000 square 
miles. 

While the values which have been given above, expressing 
the sum total of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium 
applied annually to the cultivated fields of Japan may be 
somewhat too high for some of the sources named, there 
is little doubt that Japanese farmers apply to their fields 
more of these three plant food elements annually than has 
been computed. The amounts which have been given are 
sufficient to provide annually, for each acre of the 21,312 
square miles of cultivated land, an application of not less 
than 56 pounds of nitrogen, 13 pounds of phosphorus and 
37 pounds of potassium. Or, if we omit the large northern 
island of Hokkaido, still new in its agriculture and lacking 
the intensive practices of the older farm land, the quanti- 
ties are sufficient for a mean application of 60, 14 and 40 
pounds respectively of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium 
per acre, and yet the maturing of 1000 pounds of wheat 
crop, covering grain and straw as water-free substance, 
removes from the soil but 13.9 pounds of nitrogen, 2.3 
pounds of phosphorus and 8.4 pounds of potassium, from 
which it may be computed that the 60 pounds of nitrogen 
added is sufficient for a crop yielding 31 bushels of wheat; 
the phosphorus is sufficient for a crop of 44 bushels, and 
the potassium for a crop of 35 bushels per acre. 

Dr. Hopkins, in his recent valuable work on "Soil Fer- 
tility and Permanent Agriculture" gives, on page 154, a 
table from which we abstract the following data: 

APPROXIMATE AMOUNTS OP NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND POTASSIUM 
REMOVABLE PER ACRE ANNUALLY BY 

Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, 

pounds. pounds. pounds. 

100 bush, crop of corn 148 23 Tl 

100 bush, crop of oats 97 16 68 

60 bush, crop of wheat 96 16 58 

25 bush, crop of soy beans l.W 21 "3 

100 bush, crop of rice 1.55 18 95 

3 ton crop of timothy hay 72 9 71 

4 ton crop of clover hay 100 20 120 

3 ton crop of cow pea hay 130 14 98 

8 ton crop of alfalfa hay 40O 36 192 

7,000 lb. crop of cotton 168 29.4 82 

400 bush, crop of potatoes 84 17.3 120 

20 ton crop of sugar beets 100 18 l.W 

Annually applied in Japan, more than 60 14 40 



Fertilizers Remeiveel by Crops. 215 

We have inserted in this table, for comparison, the crop 
of rice, and have increased the crop of potatoes from three 
hundred bushels to four hundred bushels per acre, because 
such a yield, like all of those named, is quite practicable 
under good management and favorable seasons, notwith- 
standing the fact that much smaller yields are generally 
attained through lack of sufficient plant food or water. 
From this table, assuming that a crop of matured grain 
contains 11 per cent of water and the straw 15 per cent, 
while potatoes contain 79 per cent and beets 87 per cent, 
the amounts of the three plant food elements removable 
annually by 1000 pounds of crop have been calciilated and 
stated in the next table. 

APPROXIMATE AMOUNTS OF NITEOGEN. PHOSPHORUS AND POTASSIUM 
REMOVABLE ANNUALLY PER 1,0000 POUNDS OP DRY CROP SUBSTANCE. 

Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, 
pounds. pounds. pounds. 

Wheat 13.873 2.312 S.382 

Oats IS.fifiO 2.2i4 9..T80 

Corn 13.719 2.149 6.676 

Legumes. 

Soy beans 30.807 4.070 14.147 

Cow peas 25.490 2.74.5 19.216 

Clover 23.629 2.941 17.647 

.Allalfa 29. 4U 2.647 14.118 

Roots. 

Beets 19.213 3.462 30.192 

Potatoes 15.556 3.210 22.222 

Grass. 

Timothy 14.117 1.765 13.922 

Rice 9.949 1.129 6.089 

From the amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium 
applied annually to the cultivated fields of Japan and from 
the data in these two tables it may be readily seen that 
these people are now and probably long have been applying 
quite as much of these three plant food elements to their 
fields with each planting as are removed with the crop, 
and if this is true in Japan it must also be true in China. 
IMoreover there is nothing in American agricultural prac- 
tice which indicates that we shall not ultimately be com- 
pelled to do likewise. 



X. 

IN THE SHANTUNG PEOVINCE. 



On May 15th we left Shanghai by one of the coastwise 
steamers for Tsingtao, some three hundred miles farther 
north, in the Shantung Province, our object being to keep 
in touch with methods of tillage and fertilization, corre- 
sponding phases of which would occur later in the season 
there. 

The Shantung province is in the latitude of North Caro- 
lina and Kentucky, or lies between that of San Francisco 
and Los Angeles. It has an area of nearly 56,000 square 
miles, about that of Wisconsin. Less than one-half of this 
area is cultivated land yet it is at the present time sup- 
porting a population exceeding 38,000,000 of people. New 
York state has today less than ten millions and more than 
half of these are in New York city. 

It was in this province that Confucius was born 2461 
years ago, and that Mencius, his disciple, lived. Here, too, 
seventeen hundred years before Confucius' time, after one 
of the great floods of the Yellow river, 2297 B. C, and 
more than 4100 years ago, the Great Yu was appointed 
"Superintendent of Public Works" and entrusted with 
draining off the flood waters and canalizing the rivers. 

Here also was the beginning of the Boxer uprising. 
Tsingtao sits at the entrance of Kiaochow Bay. Following 
the war of Japan with China this was seized by Germany, 
November 14, 1897, nominally to indemnify for the mur- 
der of two German missionaries which had occurred in 
Shantung, and March 6th, 1898, this bay, to the high water 



Tsingtao. 217 

line, its islands and a "Sphere of Influence" extending 
thirty miles in all directions from the boundary, together 
with Tsingtao, was leased to Germany for ninety-nine 
years. Russia demanded and secured a lease of Port 
Arthur at the same time. Great Britain obtained a similar 
lease of Weihaiwei in Shantung, while to France Kwang- 
chow-wan in southern China, was leased. But the "en- 
croachments" of European powers did not stop with these 
leases and during the latter part of 1898 the "Policy of 
Spheres of Influence" culminated in the international 
rivalrj^ for railway concessions and mining. These greatly 
alarmed China and uprisings broke out very naturally first 
in Shantung, among the people nearest of kin to the 
founders of the Empire. As might have been expected of 
a patriotic, even though naturally peaceful people, they 
determined to defend their country against such encroach- 
ments and the Boxer troubles followed. 

Tsingtao has a deep, commodious harbor always free from 
ice and Germany is constructing here very extensive and 
substantial harbor improvements which will be of lasting 
benefit to the province and the Empire. A pier four miles 
in length encloses the inner wharf, and a second wharf 
is nearing completion. Germany is also maintaining a 
meteorological observatory here and has established a large, 
comprehensive Forest Garden, under excellent manage- 
ment, which is showing remarkable developments for so 
short a time. 

Our steamer entered the harbor during the night and, 
on going ashore, we soon found that only Chinese and 
German were generally spoken ; but through the kind 
assistance of Rev. W. H. Scott, of the American Presby- 
terian Mission, an interpreter promised to call at my hotel 
in the evening, although he failed to appear. The afternoon 
was spent at the Forest Garden and on the reforestation 
tract, which are under the supervision of Mr. Haas. The 
Forest Garden covers two hundred and seventy acres and 
the reforestation tract three thousand acres more. In the 
garden a great variety of forest and fruit trees and small 



2.18 



In the Shmitung Province. 



fruits are being tried out with high promise of the most 
valuable results. 

It was in the steep hills al)Out Tsingtao that we first 
saw at close range serious soil erosion in China; and the 
returning of forest growth on hills nearly devoid of soil 




Pig. 118.— Granite hill destitute ot soil, rapidly falling into decay. Refores- 
tation area, Tsingtao, Stantung. 

was here remarkable, in view of the long dry seasons which 
prevail from November to June, and Fig. 118 shows how 
destitute of soil the crests of granite hills may become and 
yet how the coming back of the forest growth may hasten 
as soon as it is no longer cut away. The rock going into 
decay, where this view was taken, is an extremely coarse 
crystalline granite, as may be seen jn contrast with the 
watch, and it is falling into decay at a marvelous rate. 



Reforestaiion. 



219 




220 



In the Shantung Province. 



Disintegration has penetrated the rock far below the sur- 
face and the large crystals are held together with but little 
more tenacity than prevails in a bed of gravel. Moisture 
and even roots penetrate it deeply and readily and the 
crystals fall apart with thrusts of the knife blade, the rock 
crumbling with the greatest freedom. Roadways have been 
extensively carved along the sides of the hills with the aid 
of onh' pick and shovel. Close examination of the rock 
shows that layers of sediment exist between the crystal 



■-;r;/''vr-V}t'j-Wi^SHj^SW 


■j^H 






_^ ri — ^ij;^ — ^ : iiii 





Fig. 120. — Forest and herbaceous growth eoming back over such soil condi- 
tions as are seen in Figs. 118 and 119. Reforestation tract, Tsingtao, 
Shantung. 



faces, either washed down by percolating rain or formed 
through decomposition of the crystals in place. The next 
illustration, Pig. 119, shows how large the growth on such 
soils may be, and in Fig. 120 the vegetation and forest 
growth are seen coming back, closely covering just such 
soil surfaces and rock structure as are indicated in Figs. 
118 and 119. 

These views are taken on the reforestation tract at 
Tsingtao but most of the growth is volunteer, standing 
now protected by the German government in their effort 
to see what may be possible under careful supervision. 



Wild Yellow Rose. 



221 



The loads of pine bough fuel represented in Pig. 80 
were gathered from such hills and from such forest growth 
as are here represented, but on lands more distant from 
the city. But Tsingtao, with its forty thousand Chinese, 
and Kiaoehow across the bay, with its one hundred and 
twenty thousand more, and other villages dotting the nar- 
row plains, maintain a very great demand for such growth 
on the hill lands. The wonder is that forest growth has 
persisted at all and has contributed so much in the way of 
fuel. 



^^^ 


^P^§g||E 











Fig. 121.— Close view oJ the wild yellow Shantung rose cultivated in the 
Forest Garden at Tsingtao and very eflectlve lor parks and pleasure 
drives. 



Growing in the Forest Garden was a most beautiful wild 
yellow rose, native to Shantung, being used for landscape 
effect in the parking, and it ought to be widely introduced 
into other countries wherever it will thrive. It was 
growing as heavy borders and massive clumps six to eight 
feet high, giving a most wonderful effect, with its brilliant, 
dense cloud of the richest yellow bloom. The blossoms are 
single, fully as large as the Rosa rugosa, with the tips of 
the petals shading into the most dainty light straw yellow, 



222 In the Shantung Province. 

while the center is a deep orange, the contrast being suffi- 
cient to show in the photograph from which Fig. 121 was 
prepared. Another beautiful and striking feature of this 
rose is the clustering of the blossoms in one-sided wreath- 
like sprays, sometimes twelve to eighteen inches long, the 
flowers standing close enough to even overlap. 

The interpreter engaged for us failed to appear as per 
agreement so the next morning we took the early train 
for Tsinan to obtain a general view of the country and to 
note the places most favorable as points for tield study. 
We had resolved also to make an effort to secure an inter- 
preter through- the American Presbyterian College at 
Tsinan. Leaving Tsingtao, the train skirts around the 
Kiaochow bay for a distance of nearly fifty miles, where 
we pass the city of the same name with its population of 
120,000, which had an import and export trade in 1905 
valued at over $24,000,000. At Sochen we passed through 
a coal mining district where coal was being brought to the 
cars in baskets carried by men. The coal on the loaded 
open cars was sprinkled with whitewash, serving as a seal 
to safe-guard against stealing during transit, making it 
so that none could be removed without the fact being 
revealed by breaking the seal. This practice is general in 
China and is applied to many commodities handled in 
bulk. "We saw baskets of milled rice carried by coolies 
sealed with a pattern laid over the siirface by sprinkling 
some colored powder upon it. Cut stone, corded for the 
market, was whitewashed in the same manner as the coal. 
As we were approaching Weihsien, another city of 
100,000 people, we identified one of the deeply depressed, 
centuries-old roadways, worn eight to ten feet deep, by 
chancing to see half a dozen teams passing along it as the 
train crossed. "We had passed several and were puzzling 
to account for such peculiar erosion. The teams gave the 
explanation and thus connected our earlier reading with 
the concrete. Along these deep-cut roadways caravans may 
pass, winding through the fields, entirely unobserved unless 
one chances to be close along the line or the movement is 



Los.f in Tsinan. 223 

discovered by clouds of dust, one of the methods that has 
produced them, and we would not be surprised if gathering 
manure from them has played a large part also. 

Weihsien is near one of the great commercial highways 
of China and in the center of one of the coal mining regions 
of the province. Still further along towards Tsinan we 
passed Tsingchowfu, another of the large cities of the 
province, with 150,000 population. All day we rode 
through fields of wheat, always planted in rows, and in 
hills in the row east of Kaumi, but in single or double 
continuous drills westward from here to Tsinan. Thous- 
ands of wells used for irrigation, of the type seen in Fig. 
123, were passed during the day, many of them recently 
dug to supply water for the barley suffering from the 
severe drought which was threatening the crop at the time. 

It was 6 :30 P. M. before our train pulled into the 
station at Tsinan ; 7 :30 when we had finished supper and 
engaged a ricksha to take us to the American Presbyterian 
College in quest of an interpreter. We could not speak 
Chinese, the ricksha boy could neither speak nor under- 
stand a word of English, but the hotel proprietor had 
instructed him where to go. We plunged into the narrow 
streets of a great Chinese city, the boy running wherever 
he could, walking where he must on account of the density 
of the crowds or the roughness of the stone paving. We 
had turned many corners, crossed bridges and passed 
through tunneled archways in sections of the massive city 
walls, until it was getting dusk and the ricksha man pur- 
chased and lighted a lantern. We were to reach the college 
in thirty minutes but had been out a full hour. A little 
later the boy drew up to and held conference with a police- 
man. The curious of the street gathered about and it 
dawned upon us that we were lost in the night in the 
narrow streets of a Chinese city of a hundred thousand 
people. To go further would be useless for the gates of 
the mission compound would be locked. We could only 
indicate by motions our desire to return but these were 
not understood. On the train a thoughtful, kindly old 



224 1)1 the Shantung Province. 

German had recognized a stranger in a foreign land and 
volunteered useful information, cutting from his daily 
paper an advertisement describing a good hotel. This gave 
the name of the hotel in German, English and in Chinese 
characters. We handed this to the policeman, pointing to 
the name of the hotel, indicating by motions the desire to 
return, but apparently he was unable to read in either 
language and seemed to think we were assuming to direct 
the way to the college. A man and boy in the crowd 
apparently volunteered to act as escort for us. The throng 
parted and we left them, turned more corners into more 
unlighted narrow alleyways, one of which was too difficult 
to permit us to ride. The escorts, if such they were, finally 
left us, but the dark alley led on until it terminated at 
the blank face, probably of some other portion of the mas- 
sive city wall we had thrice threaded through lighted 
tunnels. Here the ricksha boy stopped and turned about 
but the light from his lantern was too feeble to permit 
reading the workings of his mind through his face, and our 
tongues were both utterly useless in this emergency, so we 
motioned for him to turn back and by some route we 
reached the hotel at 11 P. M. 

We abandoned the effort to visit the college, for the 
purpose of securing an interpreter, and took the early train 
back to Tsingtao, reaching there in time to secure the very 
satisfactory service of Jlr. Chu Wei Yung, through the 
further kind offices of Mr. Scott. We had been twice over 
the road between the two cities, obtaining a general Idea 
of the country and of the crops and field operations at this 
season. The next morning we took an early train to 
Tsangkau and were ready to walk through the fields and 
to talk with the last generations of more than forty un- 
broken centuries of farmers who, with brain and brawn, 
have successfully and continuously sustained large families 
on small areas without impoverishing their soil. The next 
illustration is from a photograph taken in one of these 
fields. We astonished the old farmer by asking the privi- 
lege of holding his plow through one round in his little 



Chinese Flow. 



225 



field, liut he granted the privilege readil}^ Our furrow 
was not as well turned as liis, nor as well as we could have 
done with a two-handled Oliver or John Deere, but it was 
better than the old man had expected and won his respect. 
This plow had a good steel point, as a separate, blunt, 
V-shaped piece, and a nioldboard of cast steel with a good 
twist which turned the soil well. The standard and sole 
were of wood and at the end of the beam was a block for 
gauging the depth of furrow. The cost of this plow, to 




Fig. 122.— A Shantung ploiv, simple but cflective. 



the farmer, was .t2.]5. gold, and when the day's work is 
done it is taken home on the shoulders, even though the 
distance may be a mile or more, and carefully housed. 
Chinese history states that the plow was invented by 
Shennung, who lived 2737-2697 B. C. and "taught the 
art of agriculture and the medical use of herbs". He is 
honored as the "God of Agriculture and Medicine." 

Through my interpreter we learned that there were 
twelve in this man's family, which he maintained on fifteen 
mow of land, or 2.5 acres, together with his team, consist- 
ing of a cow and small donkey, besides feeding two pigs. 
15 



226 ■ //) tlu: Shantung Province. 

This is at the rate of 192 people, 16 cows, 16 donkeys and 
32 pigs on a forty-aere farm ; and of a population density 
equivalent to 3072 people, 256 cows, 256 donkeys and 512 
swine per square mile of cultivated field. 

On another small holding we talked with the farmer 
standing at the well in Fig. 27, where he was irrigating 
a little piece of barley 30 feet wide and 138 feet long. 
He owned and was cultivating but one and two-thirds acres 
of land and yet there were ten in his family and he kept 
one donkey and usually one pig. Here is a maintenance 
capacity at the rate of 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs 
on a forty -acre farm; and a population density of 3840 
people, 384 donkeys and 384 pigs per square mile. His 
usual annual sales in good seasons were equivalent in value 
to $73, gold. 

In both of these cases the crops grown were wheat, bar- 
ley, large and small millet, sweet potatoes and soy beans or 
peanuts. Much straw braid is manufactured in the prov- 
ince by the women and children in their homes, and the 
cargo of the steamer on which we returned to Shanghai 
consisted almost entirely of shelled peanuts in gunny sacks 
and huge bales of straw braid destined for the manufacture 
of hats in Europe and America. 

Shantung has only moderate rainfall, little more than 
24 inches annually, and this fact has played an important 
part in determining the agricultural practices of these very 
old people. In Fig. 123 is a closer view than Fig. 27 of 
the farmer watering his little field of barley. The well 
had just been dug over eight feet deep, expressly and solely 
to water this one piece of grain once, after which it would 
be filled and the ground planted. 

The season had been unusually dry, as had been the 
one before, and the people were fearing famine. Only 2.44 
inches of rain had fallen at Tsingtao between the end of 
the preceding October and our visit. May 21st, and hun- 
dreds of such temporary wells had been or were being 
dug all along both sides of the two hundred and fifty miles 
of railway, and nearly all to be filled when the crop on 



Laborious Irrigatinc 



227 




I 






228 In the Shantung Province. 

the ground was irrigated, to release the land for one to 
follow. The homes are in villages a mile or more apart 
and often the holdings or rentals are scattered, separated 
by considerable distances, hence easy portability is the 
key-note in the construction of this irrigating outfit. The 
bucket is very light, simply a woven basket waterproofed 
with a paste of bean flour. The windlass turns like a 
long spool on a single pin and the standard is a tripod 
with removable legs. Some wells we saw were sixteen or 
twenty feet deep and in these the water was raised by 
a cow walking straight away at the end of a rope. 

The amount and distribution of rainfall in this province, 
as indicated by the mean of ten years' records at Tsingtao, 
obtained at the German Meteorological Observatory 
through the courtesy of Dr. B. Meyermanns, are given in 
the table in which the rainfall of Madison, Wisconsin, is 
inserted for comparison. 

Mean monthly rainfall. Mean rainfall in 10 days. 

Tsingtao, Madison, Tsingtao, Madison, 

Inciies. Indies. Inches. Inches. 

January 394 !..'» .131 .mo 

February 240 1.60 .080 .500 

March 892 2.12 .297 .707 

April 1.240 2.52 .413 .840 

May 1.636 3.62 .,545 1.207 

June 2.702 4.10 .901 1.366 

July 6.ft37 3.90 2.212 1.300 

August 5.1.57 3.21 1.719 1.070 

September 2.448 3.15 .816 1.050 

October 2.2.58 2.42 .7.53 .807 

November 396 1.78 .132 .693 

December 682 1.77 .227 .590 

Total 24.682 31.65 

While Shantung receives less than 25 inches of rain 
during the year, against Wisconsin's more than 31 inches, 
the rainfall during June, July and August in Shantung 
is nearly 14.5 inches, while Wisconsin receives but 11.2 
inches. This greater summer rainfall, with persistent fer- 
tilization and intense management, in a warm latitude, are 
some of the elements permitting Shantung today to feed 
38,247,900 people from an area equal to that upon which 
Wisconsin is yet feeding but 2,333,860. Must American 
agriculture ultimately feed sixteen people where it is now 



Tranitplaniing Sweet Fotatuca. 



229 



feeding but one ? If so, correspondingly more intense and 
effective practices must follow, and we can neither know 
too well nor too earlj- what these Old World people have 
been driven to do ; how they have succeeded, and how we 
and thej' may improve upon their practices and lighten the 
human burdens by more fully utilizing physical forces and 
mechanical appliances. 

As we passed on to other fields we found a mother and 
daughter transplanting sweet potatoes on carefully fitted 




Fig:. 124. — Strong erosion in Shantung, with wheat on remnants of tables. 



ridges of nearly air-dry soil in a little field, the remnant 
of a table on a deeply eroded hillside. Fig. 124. The 
husband was bringing water for moistening the soil from 
a deep ravine a quarter of a mile distant, carrying it on 
his shoulder in two buckets. Fig. 125, across an intervening 
gtdch. He had excavated four holes at intervals up the 
gulch and from these, with a broken gourd dipper mended 
with stitches, he filled his pails, bailing in succession from 
one to the other in regular rotation. 

The daughter was transplanting. Holding the slip with 
its tip between thumb and fingers, a strong forward stroke 
plowed a furrow in the mellow, drj' soil ; then, with a 



230 



In the Sliantung Province. 



backward movement and a downward thrust, planted the 
slip, firmed the soil about it, leaving a depression in which 
the mother poured about a pint of water from another gourd 
dipper. After this water had soaked away, dry earth 
was drawn about the slip and firmed and looser earth drawn 
over this, the only tools being the naked hands and dipper. 
The father and mother were dressed in coarse garb but 
the daughter was neatly clad, with delicate hands decorated 
with rings and a bracelet. Neither of the women had bound 




Pig. 125. — Getting water to transplant sweet potatoes. A Standard Oil can is 
balanced against China's ancient stone jar. 



feet. There were ten in his family; and on adjacent simi- 
lar areas they had small patches of wheat nearly ready for 
the harvest, all planted in hills, hoed, and in astonishingly 
vigorous condition considering the extreme drought which 
prevailed. The potatoes were being planted under these 
extreme conditions in anticipation of the rainy season which 
then was fully due. The summer before had been one 
of unusual drought, and famine was threatened. The gov- 
ernment had recently issued an edict that no sheep should 
be sold from the province, fearing they might be needed 
for food. An old woman in one of the villages came out, 



A Sliangtung Home. 



231 




Fig. lli*j. — T^'o views of tlie same f:ii-myfird. showing a pile of prepuied 
compost and tlie farm team. 



as we walked tlirough, and inquired of my interpreter if 
we had come to make it rain. Sueli was the stress under 
which we found these people. 

One of the large farmers, owning ten acres, stated that 
his usual yield of wheat in good season was 160 catty per 



232 In the Shantung Province. 

mow, equivalent to 21.3 bushels per acre. He was expect- 
ing the current season not more than one-half this amount. 
As a fertilizer he used a prepared earth compost which 
we shall describe later, mixing it with the grain and sow- 
ing in the hills with the seed, applying about 5333 pounds 
per acre, which he valued, in our currency, at $8.60, or 
$3.22 per ton. A pile of such prepared compost is seen in 
Fig. 126, ready to be transferred to the field. The views 
show with what cleanliness the yard is kept and with what 
care all animal waste is saved. The cow and donkey are 
the work team, such as was being used by the plowman 
referred to in Pig. 122. The mounds in the background 
of the lower view are graves ; the fence behind the animals 
is made from the stems of the large millet, kaoliang, while 
that at the right of the donkey is made of earth, both 
indicative of the scarcity of lumber. The buildings, too, 
are thatched and their walls are of earth plastered with 
an earthen mortar worked up with chaff. 

In another field a man plowing and fertilizing for sweet 
potatoes had brought to the field and laid down in piles 
the finely pulverized dry compost. The father was plow- 
ing; his son of sixteen years was following and scattering, 
from a basket, the pulverized dry compost in the bottom 
of the furrow. The next furrow covered the fertilizer, 
four turned together forming a ridge upon which the pota- 
toes were to be planted after a second and older son had 
smoothed and fitted the crest with a heavy hand rake. The 
fertilizer was thus applied directly beneath the row, at the 
rate of 7400 pounds per acre, valued at $7.15, our cur- 
rency, or $1.93 per ton. 

"We were astonished at the moist condition of the soil 
turned, which was such as to pack in the hand notwith- 
standing the extreme drought prevailing and the fact that 
standing water in the ground was more than eight feet 
below the surface. The field had been without crop and 
cultivated. 

To the question, "What yield of sweet potatoes do you 
expect from this piece of land?" he replied, "About 4000 



Density of Population. 233 

catty," which is 440 bushels of 56 pounds per acre. The 
usual market price was stated to be $1.00, Mexican, per one 
hundred catty, making the gross value of the crop $79.49, 
gold, per acre. His land was valued at $60, Mexican, per 
mow, or $154.80 per acre, gold. 

j\ly interpreter informed me that the average well-to-do 
farmers in this part of Shantung own from fifteen to 
twenty mow of land and this amount is quite ample 
to provide for eight people. Such farmers usually keep 
two cows, two donkeys and eight or ten pigs. The less 
well-to-do or small farmers own two to five mow and act 
as superintendents for the larger farmers. Taking the 
largest holding, of twenty mow per family of eight people, 
as a basis, the density per square mile would be 1536 
people, and an area of farm land equal to the state of 
Wisconsin would have 86,000.000 people; 21,500,000 cows; 
21,500,000 donkeys and 86.000,000 swine. These observa- 
tions apply to one of the most productive sections of 
the province, but very large areas of land in the prov- 
ince are not cultivable and the last census showed the 
total population nearly one-half of this amount. It is 
clear, therefore, that either very effective agricultural 
methods are practiced or else extreme economy is exercised. 
Both are true. 

On this day in the fields our interpreter procured his 
dinner at a farm house, bringing us four boiled eggs, for 
which he paid at the rate of 8.3 cents of oar money, but 
his dinner was probahlv included in the price. The nest 
table gives the prices for some articles obtained by inquiry 
at the Tsingtao market, May 23rd, 1909, reduced to our 
currency. 

Cents. 

Old potatoes, per lb 2.18 

New potatoes, per lb 2.87 

Salted turnip, per lb 86 

Onions, per lb 4.10 

Eadishes. bunch of 10 1.29 

string beans, per lb 11,46 

Oucumbers, per lb 5.73 

Pears, per lb 5.73 

Apricots, per lb 8.60 

Pork, fresh, per lb 10,33 

Pish, per lb 6.73 

Eggs, per dozen 6,18 



234 In the Shantung Province. 

The only items which are low compared with our own 
prices are salted turnips, radishes and eggs. Most of the 
articles listed were out of season for the locality and were 
imported for the foreigners, turnips, radishes, pork, fish 
and eggs being the exceptions. Prof. Ross informs us that 
he found eggs selling in Shensi at four for one cent of our 
money. 

Our interpreter asked a compensation of one dollar, 
Mexican, or 43 cents, U. S. currency, per day, he furnishing 
his own meals. The usual wage for farm labor here was 
$8.60, per year, with board and lodging. We have referred 
to the wages paid by missionaries for domestic service. 
As servants the Chinese are considered efficient, faithful 
and trustworthy. It was the custom of Mr. and Mrs. 
League to intrust them with the purse for marketing, 
feeling that they could be depended upon for the closest 
bargaining. Commonly, when instructed to procure a 
certain article, if they found the price one or two cash 
higher than usual they would select a cheaper substitute, 
If questioned as to why instructions were not followed 
the reply would be "Too high, no can afford." 

Mrs, League recited her experience with her cook re- 
garding his use of our kitchen appliances. After fitting 
the kitchen with a modem range and cooking utensils, and 
working with him to familiarize him with their use, she 
was surprised, on going into the kitchen a few days later, 
to find that the old Chinese stove had been set on the range 
and the cooking being done with the usual Chinese furni- 
ture. When asked why he was not using the stove his reply 
was "Take too much fire." Nothing jars on the nerves of 
these people more than incurring of needless expense, ex- 
travagance in any form, or poor judgment in making pur- 
chases. 

Daily we became more and more impressed by the evi- 
dence of the intense and incessant stress imposed by the 
dense populations of centuries, and how, under it, the laws 
of heredity have wrought upon the people, affecting con- 
stitution, habits and character. Even the cattle and sheep 



Intense Economy. 235 

liave not escaped its irresistable power. Many times in this 
province we saw men lierding flocks of twenty to thirty 
sheep along the narrow unfenced pathways winding 
through the fields, and on the grave lands. The prevailing 
drought had left very little green to be had from these 
places and yet sheep were literalh' brushing their sides 
against fresh green wheat and barley, never molesting 
them. Time and again the flocks were stampeded into 
the grain by an approaching train, but immediately they 
returned to their places without taking a nibble. The 
voice of the shepherd and an occasional well aimed lump 
of earth only being required to bring them back to their 
uninviting pastures. 

In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces a line of half a dozen 
white goats were often seen feeding single file along the 
pathways, held by a cord like a string of beads, sometimes 
led by a child. Here, too, one of the most common sights 
was the water buffalo grazing unattended among the fields 
along the paths and canal banks, with crops all about. One 
of the most memorable shocks came to us in Chekiang, 
China, when we had fallen into a revery while gazing at the 
shifting landscape from the doorway of our low-down 
Chinese houseboat. Something in the sk^' and the vegeta- 
tion along the canal bank had recalled the scenes of boy- 
hood days and it seemed, as we looked aslant up the bank 
with its fringe of grass, that we were gliding along White- 
water creek through faTiiiliar meadows and that standing 
up would bring the old home in sight. That instant there 
glided into view, framed in the doorway and projected hiorh 
against the tinted sky above the setting sun, a giant wa'^er 
buffalo standing motionless as a statue on the summit of a 
huge grave mound, lifted fully ten feet above the field. But 
in a flash this was replaced by a companion scene, and with 
all its beautiful setting, which had been as suddenly fixed 
on the memory fourteen years before in the far away 
Trossachs when our coach, hurriedly rounding a sharp turn 
in the hills, suddenly exposed a wild ox of Scotland sim- 
ilarly thrust against the sky from a small but isolated 



236 In the Shantung Province. 

roeky summit, and then, outspeeding the wireless, recol- 
lection crossed two oceans and an intervening continent, 
bringing us back to China before a speed of five miles 
per hour could move the first picture across the narrow 
doorway. 

It was through the fields about Tsangkow that the stal- 
wart freighters referred to. Fig. 32, passed us on one of the 
paths leading from Kiaochow through unnumbered country 
villages, already eleven miles on their way with their wheel- 
barrows loaded with matches made in Japan. Many of the 
wheelbarrow men seen in Shanghai and other cities are 
from Shantung families, away for employment, expecting 
to return. During the harvest season, too, many of these 
people go west and north into Manchuria seeking employ- 
ment, returning to their homes in winter. 

Alexander Hosie, in his book on Manchuria, states that 
from Chefoo alone more than 20,000 Chinese laborers cross 
to Newehwang every spring by steamer, others finding their 
way there by junks or other means, so that after the har- 
vest season 8,000 more return by steamer to Chefoo than 
left that way in the spring, from which he concludes that 
Shantung annually supplies Manchuria with agricultural 
labor to the extent of 30,000 men. 

About the average condition of wheat in Shantung dur- 
ing this dry season, and nearing maturity, is seen in Fig. 
127, standing rather more than three feet high, as indicated 
by our umbrella between the rows. Beyond the wheat and 
to the right, grave mounds serrate the sky line, no hills be- 
ing in sight, for we were in the broad plain built up from 
the sea between the two mountain islands forming the high- 
lands of Shantung. 

On May 22nd we were in the fields north of Kiaochow, 
some sixty miles by rail west from Tsingtao, but within 
the neutral zone extending thirty miles back from the high 
water line of the bay of the same name. Here the Ger- 
mans had built a broad macadam road after the best Euro- 
pean type but over it were passing the vehicles of forty 
centuries seen in Figs. 128 and 129. It is doubtful if the 



Clihicsc Roath. 



237 



resistance to travel experienced by these men on the better 
road was enough less than that on the old paths they had 
left to convince them that the cost of construction and 
maintenance would be worth while until vehicles and the 
price of labor change. It may appear strange that with a 
nation of so many millions and with so long a history, 
roads have persisted as little more than beaten foot-paths; 
but modern methods of transportation have remained phy- 
sical impossibilities to every people until the science of the 




Fig. 127. — Field ol ivlieat in Sbantung, Cliina, nearing maturity in a season of 
unusual drought. 



last century opened the way. Throughout their history 
the burdens of these people have been carried largely on 
foot, mostly on the feet of men, and of single men wherever 
the load could be advantageouslj' divided. Animals have 
been supplemental burden bearers but, as with the men, 
they have carried the load directly on their own feet, the 
mode least disturbed by inequalities of road surface. 

For adaptability to the worst road conditions no vehicle 
equals the wheelbarrow, progressing by one wheel and two 
feet. No vehicle is used more in China, if the carrying 



238 



In the Sliantung Province. 





b'-. y 



% ^~m.ieto-jj 



Pigs. 128 and 129.— The vehldea of forty centuries on a modem road ot Get- 
man construction, Eiaochow, Shantung. Ohina. 



YeMcles. 239 

pole is excepted, and no wheelbarrow in the world permits 
so high an efficiency of human power as the Chinese, as 
must be clear from Figs. 32 and 61, where nearly the 
whole load is balanced on the axle of a high, massive wheel 
with broad tire. A shoulder band from the handles of 
the barrow relieves the strain on the hands and, when the 
load or the road is heavy, men or animals may aid in 
drawing, or even, when the wind is favorable, it is not 
unusual to hoist a sail to gain propelling power. It is 
only in northern China, and then in the more level por- 
tions, where there are few or no canals, that carts have 
been extensively used, but are more difiScult to manage on 
bad roads. Most of the heavy carts, especially those in 
Manchuria, seen in Fig. 203, have the wheels framed 
rigidly to the axle which revolves with them, the bearing 
being in the bed of the cart. But new carts of modern 
type are being introduced. 

In the extent of development and utilization of inland 
waterways no people have approached the Chinese. In the 
matter of land transportation they have clearly followed 
the line of least resistance for individual initiative, so 
characteristic of industrial China. 

There are Government courier or postal roads which 
connect Peking with the most distant parts of the Empire, 
some twenty-one being usually enumerated. These, as far 
as practicable, take the shortest course, are often cut into 
the mountain sides and even pass through tunnels. In the 
plains regions these roads may be sixty to seventy-five feet 
wide, paved and occasionally bordered by rows of trees. 
In some cases, too, signal towers are erected at intervals of 
three miles and there are inns along the way, relay posts 
and stations for soldiers. 

"We have spoken of planting grain in rows and in hUls 
in the row. In Fig. 130 is a field with the rows planted in 
pairs, the members being 16 inches apart, and together oc- 
cupying 30 inches. The space between each pair is also 30 
inches, making five feet in all. This makes frequent hoeing 
practicable, which is begun early in the spring and is 



240 



In the Shantung Province. 



repeated after every rain. It also makes it possible to 
feed the plants when they can utilize food to the best 
advantage and to repeat the feeding if desirable. Besides, 
the ground in the wider space may he fitted, fertilized and 
another crop planted before the first is removed. The hills 
alternate in the rows and are 24 to 26 inches from center 
to center. 

The planting may be done by hand or with a drill such 
as that in Fig. 131, ingenious in the simple mechanism 



L^ii^J^s^m^TF-r^ 




rig. 130.— Wheat planted in hills and in rows, the pairs of rows being 
inclies apart and the rows Iti inches, covering 5 feet. 



which permits planting in hills. The husbandman had 
just returned from the field with the drill on his shoulder 
when we met at the door of his village home, where he ex- 
plained to us the construction and operation of the drill 
and permitted the photograph to be taken, but turning his 
face aside, not wishing to represent a specific character, in 
the view. In !the drill there was a heavy leaden weight 
swinging free from a point above the space between the 
openings leading to the respective drill feet. When plant- 
ing, the operator rocks the drill from side to side, causing 



Seed-drill. 



241 



the weight to hang first over one and then over the other 
opening, thus securing alternation of hills in each pair 
of rows. 

Counting the heads of wheat in the hill in a number of 
fields showed them ranging between 20 and 100, the dis- 
tance between the rows and between the hills as stated 
above. There were always a larger number of stalks per 
hill where the water capacity of the soil was large, where 
the ground water was near the surface, and where the soil 




Fig. 131. — Double row seed-drill, just returning from the fields to the village 

home. 



was evidently of good quality. This may have been partly 
the result of stooling but we have little doubt that judg- 
ment was exercised in planting, sowing less seed on the 
lighter soils where less moisture was available. In the 
piece just referred to, in the illustration, an average hill 
contained 46 stalks and the number of kernels in a head 
varied between 20 and 30. Taking Richardson's esti- 
mate of 12,000 kernels of wheat to the pound, this field 
would yield about twelve bushels of wheat per acre this 
unusually dry season. Our interpreter, whose parents lived 
near Kaomi, four stations further west, stated that in 1901, 
16 



242 III tin Shantung Province. 

one of tlieir best seasons, farmers there secured yields as 
liigli as 875 catty per legal mow, which is at the rate of 
116 bushels per acre. Such a yield on small areas highly 
fertilized and carefully tilled, when the rainfall is ample 
or where irrigation is practiced, is quite possible and in the 
Kiangsu province we observed individual small fields which 
would certainly approach close to this figure. 

Further along in our journey of the day we came upon 
a field where three, one of them a boy of fourteen years, 
were hoeing and thinning millet and maize. In China, 
during the hot weather, the only garment worn by the men 
in the field, was their trousers, and the boy had found these 
unnecessary, although he slipped into them while we were 
talking with his father. The usual yield of maize was set 
at 420 to 480 catty per mow, and that of millet at 600 
catty, or 60 to 68.5 bushels of maize and 96 bushels of mil- 
let, of fifty pounds, per acre, and the usual price 
would make the gross earnings $23.48 to $26.83 per acre 
for the maize, and $30.96, gold, for the millet. 

It was evident when walking through these fields that 
the fall-sowed grain was standing tlie drought far better 
than the barley planted in the spring, quite likely because 
of the deeper and stronger development of root system 
made possible by the longer period of growth, and partly 
because the wheat had made much of its growth utilizing 
water that had fallen before the barley was planted and 
which would have been lost from the soil through percola- 
tion and surface evaporation. Farmers here are very par- 
ticular to hoe their grain, beginning in the early spring, 
and always after rains, thoroughly appreciating the effi- 
ciency of earth mulches. Their hoe, seen in Fig. 132, is 
peculiarly well adapted to its purpose, the broad blade be- 
ing so hung that it draws nearly parallel with the surface, 
cutting shallow and permitting the soil to drop practically 
upon the place from which it was loosened. These hoes are 
made in three parts; a wooden handle, a long, strong and 
heavy iron socket shank, and a blade of steel. The blade 
is detachable and difl^erent forms and sizes cf blades may be 



Hiiciug Grain. 



243 



used on the same shank. The muk-h-prodiicing Ijlades may 
have a cutting edge tliirtten inches long and a width of 
nine inches. 

At short intervals on either hand, along the two hun- 
dred and fifty miles of railway between Tsingtao and Tsi- 
nan, were observed many piles of earth eompo.st dis- 



• _. 


■ '"'^^awB!^^^ 


'^'^- -j^^^'r^T^^^^^^ [-"r -r- . ' .- ■ 1 


' --Si^^^S 


•fw:!*^ 


^^^i&J^^ .^ %:fL-\''''--'- 


^tt 
















'm^-'^'^^''^^:^m. 



Fig. l;H.— Method ol using the broad, heavy hoe in producing surface mulch, 
as seen in Shantung, China. 



tributed in the fields. One of these piles is seen in Fig. 
133. They were sometimes on unplanted fields, in other 
cases they occurred among the growing crops soon to be 
harA'ested, or where another crop was to be planted between 
the rows of one already on the ground. Some of these 
piles were six feet high. All were built in cubical form 
with flat top and carefully plastered with a layer of earth 



244 



In the Shantung Province. 



mortar which sometimes cracked on drying, as seen in the 
illustration. The purpose of this careful shaping and plas- 
tering we did not learn although our interpreter stated 
it was to prevent the compost from being appropriated for 
use on adjacent fields. Such a finish would have the effect 
of a seal, showing if the pile had been disturbed, but we 
suspect other advantages are sought by the treatment, 
which involves so large an amount of labor. 

The amount of this earth compost prepared and used 




rig. 133. 



-CareluUy plastered earth compost stacked in tlie field awaiting 
distribution. Shantung, China. 



annually in Shantung is large, as indicated by the cases 
cited, where more than five thousand pounds, in one in- 
stance, and seven thousand pounds in another, were ap- 
plied per acre for one crop. When two or more crops 
are grown the same year on the same ground, each 
is fertilized, hence from three to six or more tons may 
be applied to each cultivated acre. The methods of pre- 
paring compost and of fertilizing in Kiangsu, Chekdang 
and Kwangtung provinces have been described. In this 
part of Shantung, in Chihli and north in Manchuria as 
far as Mukden, the methods are materially different and 
if possible even more laborious, but clearly rational and 



Opium. 245 

effective. Here nearly if not all fertilizer compost is pre- 
pared in the villages and carried to the iields, hov?ever dis- 
tant these may be. 

Rev. T. J. League very kindly accompanied us to Cheng- 
yang on the railway, from which we walked some two 
miles back to a prosperous rural village to see their meth- 
ods of preparing this compost fertilizer. It was toward 
the close of the afternoon before we reached the village, 
and from all directions husbandmen were returning from 
the fields, some with hoes, some with plows, some with 
drills over their shoulders and others leading donkeys or 
cattle, and similar customs obtain in Japan, as seen in 
Fig. 134. These were mostly the younger men. When 
we reached the village streets the older men, all bare- 
headed, as were those returning from the fields, and usu- 
allj' with their queues tied about the crown, were visiting, 
enjoying their pipes of tobacco. 

Opium is no longer used openly in China, unless it be 
permitted to some well along in years with the habit con- 
firmed, and the growing of the poppy is prohibited. The 
penalties for violating the law are heavy and enforcement 
is said to be rigid and effective. For the first violation a 
fine is imposed. If convicted of a second violation the fine 
is heavier wdth imprisonment added to help the victim 
acquire self control, and a third conviction may bring the 
death penalty. The eradication of the opium scourge 
must prove a great blessing to China. But with the pass- 
ing of this most formidable evil, for whose infliction upon 
China England was largely responsible, it is a great mis- 
fortune that through the pitiless efforts of the British- 
American Tobacco Company her people are rapidly becom- 
ing addicted to the western tobacco habit, selfish beyond 
excuse, filthy beyond measure, and unsanitary in its pollut- 
ing and oxygen-destroying effect upon the air all are com- 
pelled to breathe. It has already become a greater and 
more inexcusable burden upon mankind than opium ever 
was. 

China, with her already overtaxed fields, can ill afford 



246 



In tlir Shanlung Province. 



to give over an acre to tlie cultivation of this crop and 
she should prohibit the growing of tol)acco as she has that 
of the poppy. Let her take the wise step now when she 
readily nia.y, for all civilized nations will ultimately be 
compelled to adopt such a measure. The United States 
in 1902 had more than a million acres growing tobacco, 
and harvested 821,000,000 pounds of leaf. This leaf 
depleted those soils to the extent of more than twenty- 




Fig, 134, — Home after the day's work, in Japan. 



eight million pounds of nitrogen, twenty-nine million 
pounds of potassium and nearly two and a half million 
pounds of phosphorus, all so irrecoverably lost that even 
China, with her remarkable skill in saving and her infinite 
patience with little things, could not recover them for her 
soils. On a like area of field might as readily be grown 
twenty million bushels of wheat and if the twelve hun- 
dred million pounds of grain were all exported it would 
deplete the soil less than the tobacco crop in everything 
but phosphorus, and in this about the same. Used at 



Tobacco Consumption. 247 

home, China woukl return it aU to one or another field. 

The home consumption of toliaeco in the United States 
averaged seven pounds per capita in 1902. A like eon- 
sumption for China's four hundred millions would call 
for 2800 million pounds of leaf. If she grew it on her 
fields two million acres would not sufliee. Her soils would 
be proportionately depleted and she would be short forty 
million bushels of wheat ; but if China continues to import 
her tobacco the vast sum expended can neither fertilize 
her fields nor feed, clothe or educate her people, j'et a 
like sum expended in the importation of wheat would feed 
her hungry and enrich her soils. 

In the matter of conservation of national resources here 
is one of the greatest opportunities open to all civilized 
nations. What might not be done in the United States 
with a fund of $57,000,000 annually, the market price of 
the raw tobacco leaf, and the land, the labor and the 
capital expended in getting the product to the men who 
puff, breathe and perspire the noxious product into the 
air everyone must breathe, and who bespatter the streets, 
sidewalks, the floor of everj' public place and conveyance, 
and befoul the million spittoons, smoking rooms and smok- 
ing cars, all unnecessary' and should be uncalled for, but 
whose installation and up-keep the non-user as well as the 
user is forced to pay, and this in a countn^ of, for and 
by the people. This costly, filthy, selfi.sh tobacco habit 
should be outgrown. Let it begin in every new home, 
where the mother helps the father in refusing to set the 
example, and let its indulgence be absolutely proliil)ited 
to everyone while in public school and to all in educational 
institutions. 

Mr. League had been given a letter of introduction to 
one of the leading farmers of the village and it chanced 
that as we reached the entranceway to his home we were 
met by his son, just returning from the fields with his 
drill on his shoulder, and it is he standing in the illustra- 
tion. Fig. 131, holding the letter of introduction in his 
hand. After we had taken this photograph and another 



248 In the Shantung Province. 

one looking down the narrow street from the same point, 
we were led to the small open court of the home, perhaps 
forty by eighty feet, upon which all doors of the one- 
storied structures opened. It was dry and bare of every- 
thing green, but a row of very tall handsome trees, close 
relatives of our cottonwood, with trunks thirty feet to the 
limbs, looked down into the court over the roofs of the 
low thatched houses. Here we met the father and grand- 
father of the man with the drill, so that, with the boy 
carrying the baby in his arms, who had met his father 
in the street gateway, there were four generations of 
males at our conference. There were women and girls in 
the household but custom requires them to remain in 
retirement on such occasions. 

A low narrow four-legged bench, not unlike our carpen- 
ter's saw-horse, five feet long, was brought into the court 
as a seat, which our host and we occupied in common. 
We had been similarly received at the home of Mrs. "Wu 
in Chekiang province. On our right was the open doorway 
to the kitchen in which stood, erect and straight, the tall 
spare figure of the patriarch of the household, his eyes 
still shining black but with hair and long thin straggling 
beard a uniform dull ashen gray. No Chinese hair, it 
seems, ever becomes white with age. He seemed to have 
assumed the duties of cook for while we were there he 
lighted the fire in the kitchen and was busy, but was 
always the final oracle on any matter of difference of 
opinion between the younger men regarding answers to 
questions. Two sleeping apartments adjoining the Mtehen, 
through whose wide kang beds the waste Heat from the 
cooking was conveyed, as described on page 142, completed 
this side of the court. On our left was the main street 
completely shut off by a solid earth wall as high as the 
eaves of the house, while in front of us, adjoining the 
street, was the manure midden, a compost pit six feet 
deep and some eight feet square. A low opening in the 
street wall permitted the pit to be emptied and to receive 
earth and stubble or refuse from the fields for composting. 



Composts. 



249 




250 In the tihantung Frovince. 

Against the pit and without partition, but cut off from 
tlie court, was the home of tlie pigs, both under a common 
roof continuous with a closed structure joining with the 
sleeping apartments, while behind us and along the allej'- 
way by which we had entered were other dwelling and 
storage compartments. Thus was the large family of four 
generations provided with a peculiarly private open court 
where thej'' could work and come out for sun and air, 
both, from our standards, too meagerly provided in the 
houses. 

We had come to leam more of the methods of fertilizing 
practiced by these people. The manure midden was before 
us and the piles of earth brought in from the fields, for 
use in the process, were stacked in the street, where we 
had photographed them at the entrance, as seen in Fig. 
135. There a father, with his pipe, and two boys stand at 
the extreme left ; beyond them is a large pile of earth 
brought into the village and carefully stacked in the 
narrow street ; on the other side of the street, at the corner 
of the first building, is a pile of parth^ fermented compost 
thrown from a pit behind the walls. Further along in 
the street, on the same side, is a second large stack of 
soil where two boys are standing at either end and another 
little boy was in a near-by doorway. In front of the tree, 
on the left side of the street, stands a third boy, near him 
a small donkey and still another boy. Beyond this boy 
stands a third large stack of soil, while still beyond and 
across the way is another pile partly composted. Notwith- 
standing the cattle in the preceding illustration, the don- 
key, the men, the boys, the three long high stacks of soil 
and the two piles of compost, the ten rods of narrow 
street possessed a width of available travelway and a 
cleanliness which would appear impossible. Each farmer's 
household had its stack of soil in the street, and in walking 
through the village we passed dozens of men turning 
and mixing the soil and compost, preparing it for the 
field. 

The compost pit in front of where we sat was two-thirds 



('(imposts. 251 

filled. In it had been placed all of the manure and waste 
of the household and street, all stubble and waste roughage 
from the tield, all ashes not to be applied directly and 
some of the soil stacked in the streei. Sufficient water 
was added at intervals to keep the contents completely 
saturated and nearly submerged, the object being to con- 
trol the character of fermentation taking place. 

The capacity of these compost pits is determined by the 
amount of land served, and the period of composting is 
made as long as possible, the aim being to have the fiber 
of all organic material completely broken down, the result 
being a product of the consistency of mortar. 

A\lien it is near the time for applying the compost to 
the tield, or of feeding it to the crop, the fermented product 
is removed in waterproof carrying baskets to the floor of 
the court, to the yard, such as seen in Fig. 126, or to 
the street, where it is spread to drv', to be mixed with 
fresh soil, more ashes, and repeatedly turned and stirred 
to bring about complete aeration and to hasten the pro- 
cesses of nitrification. During all of these treatments, 
whether in the compost pit or on the nitrification floor, 
the fermenting organic matter in contact with the soil 
is converting plant food elements into soluble plant food 
substances in the form of potassium, calcium and magne- 
sium nitrates and soluble phosphates of one or another 
form, perhaps of the same bases and possibly others of 
organic type. If there is time and favorable temperature 
and moisture conditions for these fermentations to take 
place in the soil of the field before the crop will need 
it, the compost may be carried direct from the pit to the 
field and spread broadcast, to be plowed under. Otherwise 
the material is worked and reworked, with more water 
added if necessary, until it becomes a rich complete ferti- 
lizer, allowed to become dry and then finely pulverized, 
sometimes using stone rollers drawn over it by cattle, the 
donkey or by hand. The large numbers of stacks of com- 
post seen in the fields between Tsingtao and Tsinan were 
of this type and thus laboriously prepared in the villages 



252 In the Shantung Province. 

and then transported to the fields, stacked and plastered, 
to be ready for use at next planting. 

In the early days of European liistory, before modern 
chemistry had provided the cheaper and more expeditious 
method of producing potassium nitrate for the manufac- 
ture of gunpowder and fireworks, much land and effort 
were devoted to niter-farming which was no other than 
a specific application of this most ancient Chinese prac- 
tice and probably imported from China. While it was 
not until 1877 to 1879 that men of science came to know 
that the processes of nitrification, so indispensable to 
agriculture, are due to germ life, in simple justice to the 
plain farmers of the world, to those who through all the 
ages from Adam down, living close to Nature and working 
through her and with her, have fed the world, it should 
be recognized that there have been those among them who 
have grasped such essential, vital truths and have kept 
them alive in the practices of their day. And so we find 
it recorded in history as far back as. 1686 that Judge 
Samuel Lewell copied upon the cover of his journal a 
practical man's recipe for making saltpeter beds, in which 
it was directed, among other things, that there should be 
added to it "mother of petre", meaning, in Judge Lowell's 
understanding, simply soil from an old niter bed, but 
in the mind of the man who applied the maternity prefix, 
— mother, — it must have meant a vital germ contained in 
the soil, carried with it, capable of reproducing its kind 
and of perpetuating its characteristic work, belonging to 
the same category with the old, familiar, homely germ, 
"mother" of vinegar. So, too, with the old eheesemaker 
who grasped the conception which led to the long time 
practice of washing the walls of a new cheese factory with 
water from an old factory of the same type, he must have 
been led by analogies of erperience with things seen to 
realize that he was here dealing with a vital factor. Hun- 
dreds, of course, have practiced empyrieally, but some 
one preceded with the essential thought and we feel it is 
small credit to men of our time who, after ten or twenty 



Xitre-Fanning. 253 

years of technical training, having their attention directed. 
to a something to be seen, and armed with compound micro- 
scopes which permit them to see with the physical eye 
the "mother of petre", arrogate to themselves the discov- 
ery of a great truth. Much more modest would it be and 
much more in the spirit of giving credit where credit is 
due to admit that, after long doubting the existence of 
such an entity, we have succeeded in confirming in fullness 
the truth of a great discoverj' which belongs to an unnamed 
genius of the past, or perhaps to a hundred of them who, 
working with life's processes and familiar with them 
through long intimate association, saw in these invisible 
processes analogies that revealed to them the essential 
truth in such fullness as to enable them to build upon it 
an unfailing practice. 

There is another practice followed by the Chinese, con- 
nected with the formation of nitrates in soils, which again 
emphasizes the national trait of sa"\ang and turning to use 
any and every thing worth while. Our attention was 
called to this practice by Rev. A. E. Evans of Shunking, 
Szeehwan province. It rests upon the tendency of the 
earth floors of dwellings to become heavily charged with 
calcium nitrate through the natural processes of nitrifica- 
tion. Calcium nitrate being deliquescent absorbs moisture 
sufficiently to dissolve and make the floor wet and sticln'. 
Dr. Evans' attention was drawn to the wet floor in his 
own house, which he at first ascribed to insufficient ventila- 
tion, but which he was unable to remedy by improving 
that. The father of one of his assistants, whose business 
consisted in purchasing the soil of such floors for produc- 
ing potassium nitrate, used so much in China in the manu- 
facture of fireworks and gunpowder, explained his diffi- 
culty and suggested the remedy. 

This man goes from house to house through the village, 
purchasing the soil of floors which have thus become over- 
charged. He procures a sample, tests it and announces 
what he will pay for the surface two. three or four inches, 
the price sometimes being as high as fifty cents for the 



254 In tlic tihatiiung Froviucc. 

privilege of removing tlie top layer of the floor, which the 
proprietors must replace. He leaches the soil removed, 
to recover the calcium nitrate, and then pours the leach- 
ings through plant ashes containing potassium carbonate, 
for the purpose of transforming the calcium nitrate into 
the potassium nitrate or saltpeter. Dr. Evans learned that 
during the four months preceding our intervievv^ this man 
had produced sufScient potassium nitrate to bring his 
sales up to $80, Mexican. It was necessary for him to 
make a two-days journey to market his product. In addi- 
tion he paid a license fee of 80 cents per month. He 
must purchase his fuel ashes and hire the services of 
two men. 

When the nitrates which accumulate in the floors of 
dwellings are not collected for this purpose the soil goes 
to the tields to be used directly as a fertilizer, or it may 
be worked into compost. In the course of time the earth 
used in the village walls and even in the construction of 
the houses may disintegrate so as to require removal, but 
in all such cases, as with the earth brick used in the kangs, 
the value of the soil has improved for composting and is 
generally so used. This improvement of the soil will not 
appear strange when it is stated that such materials are 
usually from the subsoil, whose physical condition would 
improve when exposed to the weather, converting it in fact 
into an uncropped virgin soil. 

We were unable to secure definite data as to the chemical 
composition of these composts and cannot say what 
amounts of available plant food the Shantung farmers 
are annually returning to their fields. There can be little 
doubt, however, that the amounts are quite equal to those 
removed by the crops. The soils appeared well supplied 
with organic matter and the color of the foliage and the 
general aspect of crops indicated good feeding. 

The family with whom we talked in the village place 
their usual yields of wheat at 420 catty of grain and 1000 
catty of straw per mow,* the grain being worth 35 strings 



* Their mow was four-thirds of the legal standard mow. 



Yiilils of Gi'ain. 25o 

of i-asli autl tlie Sci'aw 12 to U striugs, a string of cash 
being 40 cents, ^lexican, at this time. Their yields of beans 
were such as to give them a return of 30 strings of cash 
for the grain and S to 10 strings for the straw. Small 
uulleL usually yielded 450 catty of grain, ■worth 25 strings 
of cash, per mow, and 800 catty of straw worth 10 to 11 
strings of cash; while the yields of large millet they placed 
at 100 catty per mow, worth 25 strings of cash, and 1000 
catty of straw worth 12 to 14 strings of cash. Stating 
these amounts in bushels per acre and in our currencj', 
the yield of wheat was 42 bushels of grain and 6000 pounds 
of straw per acre, having a cash value of $27.09 for the 
grain and $10.06 for the straw. The soy bean crop follows 
the wheat, giving an additional return of $23.22 for the 
beans and $6.97 for the straw, . making the gross earning 
for the two crops $67.34 per acre. The yield of small 
millet was 54 bushels of seed and 4800 pounds of straw 
per acre, worth $27.09 and $8.12 for seed and straw re- 
spectively, while the kaoliang or large millet gave a yield 
of 48 bushels of grain and 6000 pounds of stalks per acre, 
worth $19.35 for the grain, and $10.06 for the straw, 

A crop of wheat like the one stated, if no part of the 
plant food contained in the grain or straw were returned 
to the field, would deplete the soil to the extent of about 
90 pounds of nitrogen, 15 pounds of phosphorus and 65 
pounds of potassium: and the crop of soy beans, if it also 
were entirely removed, would reduce these three plant food 
elements in the soil to the extent of about 240 pounds of 
nitrogen, 33 pounds of phosphorus and 102 pounds of po- 
tassium, on the basis of 45 bushels of beans and 5400 pounds 
of stems and leaves per acre, assuming that the beans 
added no nitrogen to the soil, which is of course not true. 
This household of farmers, therefore, in order to have main- 
tained this producing power in their soil, have been com- 
pelled to return to it annually, in one form or another, 
not less than 48 pounds of phosphorus and 167 pounds of 
potassium per acre. The 330 pounds of nitrogen they 
would have to return in the form of organic matter or 



256 



In the Hkantnug Province. 



accumulate it from the atmosphere, through the instrumen- 
tality of their soy bean crop or some other legume. It has 
already been stated that they do add more than 5000 to 
7000 pounds of dry compost, which, repeated for a second 
crop, would make an annual application of five to seven 
tons of dry compost per acre annually. They do use, in 
addition to this compost, large amounts of bean and peanut 
cake, which carry all of the plant food elements derived 
from the soil which are contained in the beans and the 





m 


•^sOrLi^teit.Li 




"W' 








Mi" 


L: 


r _■ r 







rig. 136.— stone mill lor grinding soy beans and peanuts, Shantung, China. 



peanuts. If the vines are fed, or if the stems of the 
beans are burned for fuel, most of the plant food elements 
in these will be returned to the field, and they have doubt- 
less learned how to completely restore the plant food ele- 
ments removed by their crops, and persistently do so. . 

The roads made by the Germans in the vicinity of 
Tsingtao enabled us to travel by ricksha into the adjoining 
country, and on one such trip we visited a village min 
for grinding soy beans and peanuts in the manufacture of 
oil, and Fig. 136 shows the stone roller, four feet in diame- 
ter and two feet thick, which is revolved about a vertical 



Peanut Cake. 



257 



axis on a circular stone plate, drawn by a donkey, crushing 
the kernels partly by its weight and partly by a twisting 
motion, for the arm upon ^vliich the roller revolves is verj' 
short. After the meal had been ground the oil was ex- 
pressed in essentially the same way as that described for 
the cotton seed, but the bean and peanut cakes are made 
much larger than the cotton seed cakes, about eighteen 
inches in diameter and three to four inches thick. Two of 
these cakes are seen in Fig. 137, standing on edge outside 




rig. 



137. — Two large peanut cakes and a paper demijohn lor containing the 
oil, outside the village naill, Shantung, China. 



the mill in an orderh' clean court. It is in this form that 
bean cake is exported in large quantities to different parts 
of China, and to Japan in recent years, for use as ferti- 
lizer, and very recently it is being shipped to Europe for 
both stock food and fertilizer. 

Nowhere in this province, nor further north, did we see 
the large terra eotta receptacles so extensively used in 
the south for storing human excreta. In these drj'er 
climates some method of desiccation is practiced and we 
found the gardeners in the vicinity of Tsingtao with quan- 
tities of the fertilizer stacked under matting, shelters in 
17 



258 In the Shantung Province. 

the desiccated condition, this being finely pulverized in 
one or another way before it was applied. The next illus- 
tration, Fig. 138, shows one of these piles being fitted for 
the garden, its thatched shelter standing behind the grand- 
father of a household. His grandson was carrying the 
prepared fertilizer to the garden area seen in Fig. 139, 
where the father was working it into the soil. The greatest 
pains is taken, both in reducing the product to a fine 
powder and in spreading and incorporating it with the 
soil, for one of their maxims of soil management is to 



. ■::."- ^ :-'■ .:''m 




■ ''-'t— 


~ . <j(~-„ ,^^ 


— ... -. J. 
v-v - 






■i-^^ 


'l^^pl 


J^t 





Pig. 1S8.— Pulverizing desiccated human excreta preparatory lor use in garden 
fertilization. Shantung, China. 

make each square foot of field or garden the equal of 
every other in its power to produce. In this manner 
each little holding is made to yield the highest returns 
possible under the conditions the husbandman is able to 
control. 

From one portion of the area being fitted, a crop of 
artemisia had been harvested, giving a gross return at the 
rate of $73.19 per acre, and from another leeks had been 
taken, bringing a gross return of $43.86 per acre. 
Chinese celery was the crop for which the ground was 
being fitted. 

The application of soil as a fertilizer to the fields of 



Amovnt of Soil Added. 259 

China, whether derived from the subsoil or from the silts 
and organic matter of canals and rivers, must have played 
an important part in the permanency of agriculture in 
the Far East, for all such additions have been positive 
accretions to the effective soil, increasing its depth and 
carrying to it all plant food elements. If not more than 
one-half of the weight of compost applied to the fields 




rig. 139.— Gardener thoronghly Incorporating fertilizer with his Bofl prepara- 
tory to planting a second crop of the season, May 24th, Shanttmg, CMDa. 

of Shantung is highly fertilized soil, the rates of applica- 
tion observed would, in a thousand years, add more than 
two million pounds per acre, and this represents about 
the volume of soil we turn with the plow in our ordinary 
tillage operations, and this amount of good soil may carry 
more than 6000 pounds of nitrogen, 2000 pounds of phos- 
phorus and more than 60,000 pounds of potassium. 



260 In the Shantung Province. 

When we left our liotel by ricksha for the steamer, 
returning to Shanghai, we soon observed a boy of thirteen 
or fourteen years apparently following, sometimes ■ a little 
ahead, sometimes behind, usually keeping the sidewalk but 
slackening his pace whenever the ricksha man came to a 
walk. It was a full mile to the wharf. The boy evidently 
knew the sailing schedule and judged by the valise in 
front, that we were to take the out-going steamer and 
that he might possibly earn two cents, Mexican, the usual 
fee for taking a valise aboard the steamer. Twenty men 
at the wharf might be waiting for the job, but he was 
taking the chance with the mile down and back thrown 
in, and all for less than one cent in our currency, equiva- 
lent at the time to about twenty "cash". As we neared 
the steamer the lad closed up behind but strong and eager 
men were watching. Twice he was roughly thrust aside 
and before the ricksha stopped a man of stalwart frame 
seized the valise and, had we not observed the boy thus 
unobtrusively entering the competition, he would have had 
only his trouble for his pains. Thus intense was the strug- 
gle here for existence and thus did a mere lad put himself 
effectively into it. True to breeding and example he had 
spared no labor to win and was surprised but grateful to 
receive more than he had expected. 



XL 



ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND 
SPACE. 



Time is a function of everj' life process, as it is of every 
physical, chemical and mental reaction, and the husband- 
man is compelled to shape his operations so as to conform 
with the time requirements of his crops. The oriental 
farmer is a time economizer bej'ond any other. He util- 
izes 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 hurr\'. And why 
should he be when he leads time by the forelock, and uses 
all there is? 

The customs and practices of these Farthest East people 
regarding their manufacture of fertilizers in the form of 
earth composts for their fields, and their use of altered 
subsoils which liave served in their kangs, village walls 
and dwellings, are all instances where they profoundly 
sliorten the time required in the field to affect the necessary 
cliemical. physical and biological reactions which produce 
from them plant food substances. Not only do they thus 
increase their time assets, but they add, in effect, to their 
land area by producing these changes outside their fields, 
at the same time giving their crops the immediately active 
soil products. 

Their compost practices have been of the greatest conse- 
quence to them, both in their extremely wet, rice-culture 
methods, and in their "dry-farming" practices, where the 
soil moisture is too scanty during long periods to permit 



262 Orientals Crowd Both Time and Space. 

rapid fermentation under field conditions. Western agri- 
culturalists have not sufficiently appreciated the fact that 
the most rapid growth of plant food substances in the 
soil cannot occur at the same time and place with the 
most rapid crop increase, because both processes draw upon 
the available soil moisture, soil air and soluble potassium, 
calcium, phosphorus and nitrogen compounds. Wiether 
this fundamental principle of practical agriculture is 
written in their literature or not it is most indelibly fixed 




«rf* -I— Ti-'L«u^J 



^--'^^r^T^p ' 




jijg. 140. Looiing across reservoir and lour-man foot-power pump, used to 

lift water to a nursery rice bed, at fields of grain sowed broadcast In 
narrow beds. 

in their practice. If we and they can perpetuate the 
essentials of this practice at a large saving of human effort, 
or perpetually secure the final result in some more expedi- 
tious and less laborious way, most important progress will 
have been made. 

When we went north to the Shantung province the 
Kiangsu and Chekiang farmers were engaged in another 
of their time saving practices, also involving a large 
amount of human labor. This was the planting of cotton 
in wheat fields before the wheat was quite ready to 



Cotton Sowed in Wheat. 



263 



harvest. In the sections of these two provinces which we 
visited most of the wheat and barley were soAved broadcast 
on narrow raised lands, some five feet wide, with furrows 
between, after the manner seen in Fig. 140, showing a 
reservoir in the immediate foreground, on whose bank is 
installed one of the four-man foot-power irrigation pumps 
in use to flood the nursery rice bed close by on the right. 
The narrow lands of broadcasted wheat extend back from 




Fig. 141.— Field of wheat with grain four feet, eight inches high, nearing time 
of harvest, in which cotton is planted. 



the reservoir toward the farmsteads which dot the land- 
scape, and on the left stands one of the pump shelters 
near the canal bank. 

To save time, or lengthen the growing season of the 
cotton which was to follow, this seed was sown broadcast 
among the grain on the surface, some ten to tifteen days 
before the wheat would be harvested. To cover the seed 
the soil in the furrows between the beds had been spaded 
loose to a depth of four or five inches, finely pulverized, 
and then with a spade was evenly scattered over the 
bed, letting it sift down among the grain, covering the 



264 



Orientals Crowd Botlt Time and Space. 



seed. This loose earth, so applied, acts as a mulch to 
conserve the capillary moisture, permitting the soil to he- 
come sufficiently damp to germinate the seed before the 
wheat is harvested. The next illustration, Fig. 141, is 
a closer view with our interpreter standing in another 
tield of wheat in which cotton was being sowed April 22nd 
in the manner described, and yet the stand of grain was 




Pig. 142.— View oJ same field as Fig, 141, aJtei the grain tiad been eut, removed 
and the cotton sowed in it was up. 



verj' close and shoulder high, making it not an easy task 
either to sow the seed or to scatter sufficient soil to cover 
it. 

"When we had returned from Shantung this piece of 
grain had been harvested, giving a yield of 95.6 bushels 
of wheat and 3.5 tons of straw per acre, computed from 
the statement of the owner that 400 catt.y of grain and 
500 catty of straw had been taken from the beds meas- 
uring 4050 square feet. On the morning of May 29th 
the photograph for Fig, 142 was taken, showing the same 



Cotton Sowed in ^Yhcat. 265 

area after the wheat had been harvested and the cotton 
was up, the young plants showing slightly through the 
short stubble. These beds had already been once treated 
with liquid fertilizer. A little later the plants would be 
hoed and thinned to a stand of about one plant per each 




Fig. 14.^. — Multiple crops, ^^heat. -n-indsor beans and cotton. Wheat ready to 
harvest, beans two-thirds groTvn. cotton just planted. Upper view looking 
between wheat rows, lower, looking between bean rows now covering 
ground. 

square foot of surface. There were thirty-seven days 
between the taking of the two photographs, and certainly 
thirty days had been added to the cotton crop by this 
method of planting, over what would have been available 
if the grain had been first harvested and the field fitted 
before planting. It will be observed that the cotton follows 



266 



Orientals Crowd Both Time and Space- 



the wheat without plowing, but the soil was deep, naturally 
open, and a layer of nearly two inches of loose earth 
had been placed over the seed at the time of planting. 
Besides, the ground would be deeply worked with the 
two or four tined hoe, at the time of thinning. 

Starting cotton in the wheat in the manner described 
is but a special case of a general practice widely in vogue. 
The growing of multiple crops is the rule throughout these 
countries wherever the climate permits. Sometimes as 
many as three crops occupy the same field in recurrent 




Fig. 144.— Turning under a crop of "Ohinese clover" lor green manure, grown 
with barley and to be lollowed by cotton. 

rows, but of different dates of planting and in different 
stages of maturity. Reference has been made to the over- 
lapping and alternation of cucumbers with greens. The 
general practice of planting nearly all crops in rows lends 
itself readily to systems of multiple cropping, and these 
to the fullest possible utilization of every minute of the 
growing season and of the time of the family in earing 
for the crops. In the field. Pig. 143, a crop of winter 
wheat was nearing maturity, a crop of Windsor beans was 
about two-thirds grown, and cotton had just been planted, 
April 22nd. This field had been thrown into ridges some 
five feet wide with a twelve inch furrow between them. 
Two rows of wheat eight inches wide, planted two feet 
between centers occupied the crest of the ridge, leaving a 



other Multiple Cropping. 



267 



strip sixteen inches wide, seen in the upper section, (1) 
for tillage, (2) then fertilization and (3) finally the row 
of cotton planted just before the wheat was harvested. 
Against the furrow on each side was a row of Windsor 
beans, seen in the lower view, hiding the furrow, which 
was matured some time after the wheat was harvested and 
before the cotton was very large. A late fall crop some- 
times follows the Windsor beans after a period of tillage 




Fig. 145.— Multiple crops In Chihli— wheat and sorghum, the wheat ripe, to be 
lollowed by soy beans. Piles of compost earth for soy beans. 



and fertilization, making four in one year. "With such 
a succession fertilization for each crop, and an abundance 
of soil moisture are required to give the largest returns 
from the soil. 

In another plan winter wheat or barley may grow side 
by side with a green crop, such as the 'Chinese clover" 
{Medicago denticulata, Willd.) for soil fertilizer, as was 
the case in Fig. 144, to be turned under and fertilize for 
a crop of cotton planted in rows on either side of a crop 
of barley. After the barley had been harvested the 
ground it occupied would be tilled and further ferti- 
lized, and when the cotton was nearing maturity a crop 



268 



Oiientals Crowd Both Time and Space. 



of rape might be grown, from which "salted cabbage" 
would be prepared for winter use. 

Multiple crops are grown as far north in Chihli as 
Tientsin and Peking, these being oftenest wheat, maize, 
large and small millet and soy beans, and this, too, where 
the soil is less fertile and where the annual rainfall is 
only about twenty-five inches, the rainy season beginning 
in late June or early -Julj% and Fig. 145 shows one of 




rig. 146.— Family engaged in cutting, from bundles of wheat, the roots to be 
used in making compost, Chihli, China. 



these fields as it appeared June 14th. where two rows of 
wheat and two of large millet were planted in alternating 
pairs, the rows being about twenty-eight inches apart. 
The wheat was ready to harvest but the straw was unusu- 
ally short because growing on a light sandy loam in a 
season of exceptional drought, but little more than two 
inches of rain having fallen after January 1st of that 
year. 

The piles of pulverized dry-earth compost seen between 
the rows had been brought for use on the ground occupied 



Saving Wlnat Boois. 



269 



by the wheat -when that was removed. The wheat would 
be pulled, tied in bundles, taken to the village and the 
roots cut off, for making compost, as in Fig. 146, which 
shows the family engaged in cutting the roots from the 
small bundles of wheat, using a long straight knife blade, 
fixed at one end, and tlirust downward upon tlie bundle 
with lever pressure. These roots, if not used as fuel, 
would be transferred to the compost pit in the enclosure 
seen in Fig. 147, whose walls were built of earth brick. 
Here, with any other waste litter, manure or ashes, they 




Fig. Ii7. — ■Compost shelter and pig pen, Tvith pile of Tvheat roots stacked at 
one end, for use in making compost, Chihli, China. 



would be permitted to decay under water until the fiber 
had been destroyed, thus permitting it to be incoi-porated 
with soil and applied to the fields, rich in soluble plant 
food and in a condition which would not interfere with the 
capillary movement of soil moisture, the work going on 
outside the field where the changes could occur unimpeded 
and without interfering with the growth of crops on the 
ground. 

In this system of combined intertillage and multiple 
cropping the oriental farmer thus takes advantage of what- 
ever good may result from rotation or succession of crops, 
whether these be physical, vito-chemical or biological. If 



270 Onentals Crowd Both Time and Space. 

plants are mutually helpful through close association of 
their root systems in the soil, as some believe may be the 
case, this growing of different species in close juxtaposition 
would seem to provide the opportunity, but the other ad- 
vantages which have been pointed out are so evident and 
so important that they, rather than this, have doubtless led 
to the practice of growing different crops in close recurrent 
rows. 



XII. 
EICE CULTUKE IN THE ORIENT. 



The basal food crop of the people of China, Korea and 
Japan is rice, and the mean consumption in Japan, for 
the five years ending 1906, per capita and per annum, 
was 302 pounds. Of Japan's 175,428 square miles she 
devoted, in 1906, 12,856 to the rice crop. Her average 
yield of water rice on 12,534 square miles exceeded 33 
bushels per acre, and the dry land rice averaged 18 bushels 
per acre on 321 square miles. In the Hokkaido, as far 
north as northern Hlinois, Japan harvested 1,780,000 
bushels of water rice from 53,000 acres. 

In Szechwan province, China, Consul-General Hosie 
places the yield of water rice on the plains land at 44 
bushels per acre, and that of the dry land rice at 22 
bushels. Data given us in China show an average yield of 
42 bushels of water rice per acre, while the average yield 
of wheat was 25 bushels per acre, the normal yield in 
Japan being about 17 bushels. 

If the rice eaten per capita in China proper and Korea 
is equal to that in Japan the annual consumption for the 
three nations, using the round number 300 pounds per 
capita per annum, would be : 

Population. Consumption. 

China IIO.OCO.OOC 61,600,000 tone 

Korea 12,000,000 1,800,000 tons 

Japan 53,000,000 7,950 000 tons 

Total 475,000,000 71,250,000 ton» 

If the ratio of irrigated to dry land rice in Korea and 
China proper is the same as that in Japan, and if the 



272 Rue CuUure in the Orient. 

mean jdeld of rice per acre in these countries were forty 
bushels for the water rice and twenty bushels for the dry 
land rice, the acreage required to give this production 
would be: 

Area. 

Water rice, Dry land rice, 

sq. miles. sq. miles. 

In China 78,073 4,004 

In Korea 2,285 117 

In Japan 12,534 321 

Sum 92,892 4,442 

Total 97,334 

Our observations along the four hundred miles of rail- 
way in Korea between Antung, Seoul and Fusan, suggest 
that the land under rice in this country must be more 
rather than less than that computed, and the square miles 
of canalized land in China, as indicated on pages 97 to 
102, would indicate an acreage of rice for her quite as large 
as estimated. 

In the three main islands of Japan more than fifty per 
cent of the cultivated land produces a crop of water rice 
each j'ear and 7.96 per cent of the entire land area of the 
Empire, omitting far-north Karafuto. In Formosa and in 
southern China large areas produce two crops each year. 
At the large mean yield used in the computation the esti- 
mated acreage of rice in China proper amounts to 5.93 
per cent of her total area and this is 7433 square miles 
greater than the acreage of wheat in the United States 
in 1907. Our yield of wheat, however, was but 
19,000,000 tons, while China's output of rice was certainly 
double and probably three times this amount from nearly 
the same acreage of land; and notwithstanding this large 
production per acre, more than fifty per cent, possibly 
as high as seventy-five per cent, of the same land matures 
at least one other crop the same year, and much of this 
may be wheat or barley, both chiefly consumed as human 
food. 

Had the Mongolian races spread, to and developed in 
North America instead of, or as well as, in eastern Asia, 



Comparable Conservation. 



273 



there migfht have been a Grand Canal, something as sug- 
gested in Fig. 148, from the Rio Grande to the mouth ot 
the Ohio river and from the Mississippi to Chesapeake 
Bay, constituting more than two thousand miles of inland 
water-wa.y, serving commerce, holding up and redistribut- 
ing both the run-off water and the wasting fertility of 
soil erosion, spreading them over 200,000 square miles of 
thoroughl.y canalized coastal plains, so many of which are 




Pig. 148.— A canal which would correspond with the Grand Canal ol China. 



now impoverished lands, made so by the intolerable waste 
of a vaunted civilization. And who shall venture to enum- 
erate the increase in the tonnage of sugar, bales of cotton, 
sacks of rice, boxes of oranges, baskets of peaches, and 
in the trainloads of cabbage, tomatoes and celery such 
hiLsbanding would make possible through all time ; or num- 
ber the increased millions these could feed and clothe? We 
may prohibit the exportation of our phosphorus, grind our 
limestone, and apply them to our fields, but this alone is 
only temporizing with the future. The more we produce, 
the more numerous our millions, the faster must present 

18 



274 Rice Culture in the Orient. 

practices speed the waste to the sea, from whence neither 
money nor prayer can call them back. 

If the United States is to endure; if we shall project 
our history even through four or five thousand years as 
the Mongolian nations have done, and if that history 
shall be written in continuous peace, free from periods of 
wide spread famine or pestilence, this nation must orient 
itself; it must square its practices with a conservation of 
resources which can make endurance possible. Intensify- 
ing cultural methods but intensifies the digestion, assimi- 
lation and exhaustion of the surface soil, from which life 
springs. Multiple cropping, closer stands on the ground 
and stronger growth, all mean the transpiration of much 
more water per acre through the crops, and this can only 
be rendered possible through a redistribution of the run-off 
and the adoption of irrigation practices in humid climates 
where water exists in abundance. Sooner or later we must 
adopt a national policy which shall more completely con- 
serve our water resources, utilizing them not onlj^ for 
power and transportation, but primarily for the mainte- 
nance of soil fertility and greater crop production through 
supplemental irrigation, and all these great national inter- 
ests should be considered collectively, broadly, and with 
a view to the fullest and best possible coordination. China, 
Korea and Japan long ago struck the keynote of perma- 
nent agriculture but the time has now come when they can 
and will make great improvements, and it remains for us 
and other nations to profit by their experience, to adopt 
and adapt what is good in their practice and help in a 
world movement for the introduction of new and im- 
proved methods. 

In selecting rice as their staple crop ; in developing and 
maintaining their systems of combined irrigation and 
drainage, notwithstanding they have a large summer rain- 
fall; in their systems of multiple cropping; in their ex- 
tensive and persistent use of legumes; in their rotations 
for green manure to maintain the humus of their soils and 



Painstaking Methods. 



275 




276 



Rice Culture in the Orient. 



for composting; and in the almost religious fidelity with 
which they have returned to their fields every form of 
waste which can replace plant food removed by the crops, 
these nations have demonstrated a grasp of essentials and 
of fundamental principles which may well cause western 
nations to pause and reflect. 

While this country need not and could not now adopt 
their laborious methods of rice culture, and while, let us 




Fig. 150.— Rice fields on the plains of the Yangtse-kiang, China, being flooded 
preparatory to transplanting rice. 



hope, those who come after us may never be compelled to 
do so, it is nevertheless quite worth while to study, for 
the sake of the principles involved, the practices they have 
been led to adopt. 

Great as is the acreage of land in rice in these coun- 
tries, but little, relatively, is of the dry land type, and the 
fields upon which most of the rice grows have all been 
graded to a water level and surrounded by low, narrow 
raised rims, such as may be seen in Fig. 149 and in Fig. 
150, where three men are at work on their foot-power 



Size of Bice Faddies. 277 

pump, floodiBg fields preparatory to transplanting the 
rice. If the country was not level then the slopes have 
been graded into horizontal terraces varying in size ac- 
cording to the steepness of the areas in which they were 
cut. We saw these often no larger than the floor of a 
small room, and Professor Ross informed me that he 
walked past those in the interior of China no larger than 
a dining table and that he saw one bearing its crop of 
rice, surrounded by its rim and holding water, yet barely 
larger than a good napkin. The average area of the 
paddy field in Japan is officially reported at 1.14 se, or 
an area of but 31 by 40 feet. Excluding Hokkaido, For- 
mosa and Karafuto, fifty-three per cent of the irrigated 
rice lands in Japan are in allotments smaller than one- 
eighth of an acre, and seventy-four per cent of other cul- 
tivated lands are held in areas less than one-fourth of an 
acre, and each of these may be further subdivided. The 
next two illustrations. Figs. 151 and 152, give a good 
idea both of the small size of the rice fields and of the 
terracing which has been done to secure the water level 
basins. The house standing near the center of Fig. 151 is 
a good scale for judging both the size of the paddies and 
the slope of the valley. The distance between the rows 
of rice is scarcely one foot, hence counting these in the 
foreground may serve as another measure. There are 
more than twenty little fields shown in this engraving in 
front of the house and reaching but half way to it, and 
the house was less than five hundred feet from the camera. 
There are more than eleven thousand square miles of 
fields thus graded in the three main islands of Japan, 
each provided with rims, with water supply and drainage 
channels, all carefully kept in the best of repair. The 
more level areas, too, in each of the three countries, have 
been similarly thrown into water level basins, compara- 
tively few of which cover large areas, because nearly al- 
ways the holdings are small. All of the earth excavated 
from the canals and drainage channels has been leveled 
over the fields unless needed for levees or dikes, so that 



278 



Rice Culture in the Orient. 




I 
a 

do 



Gains from Irrigation Water. 



279 



the original labor of construction, added to that of main- 
tenance, makes a total far beyond our comprehension and 
nearlj' all of it is the product of human effort. 

The laying out and shaping of so many fields into these 
level basins brings to the three nations an enormous ag- 
gregate annual asset, a large proportion of which west- 
ern nations are not yet utilizing. The greatest gain 



r" 


ii 


^ 


i 




.jlSUM 






^^^^^Hf^^^^^HQI 




•v':i^ 


^P 


|pi 





Pig. 152.— LookiDff down a steep, narrow Japanese vaUey at small, flooded and 
transplanted rice paddies. 

comes from the unfailing higher yields made possible by 
providing an abundance of water through which more 
plant food can be utilized, thus providing higher aver- 
age yields. The waters uised, coming as they do largely 
from the uncultivated hills and mountain lands, carrying 
both dissolved and suspended matters, make positive" an- 
nual additions of dissolved limestone and plant food ele- 
ments to the fields which in the aggregate have been very 



280 Rice Culture in the Orient. 

large, through the persistent repetitions which have pre- 
vailed for centuries. If the yearly application of such 
water to the rice fields is but sixteen inches, and this has 
the average composition quoted by Merrill for rivers of 
North America, taking into account neither suspended 
matter nor the absorption of potassium and phosphorus 
by it, each ten thousand square miles would receive, dis- 
solved in the water, substances containing some 1,400 
tons of phosphorus; 23,000 tons of potassium; 27,000 
tons of nitrogen; and 48,000 tons of sulphur. In addi- 
tion, there are brought to the fields some 216,000 tons 
of dissolved organic matter and a still larger weight of 
dissolved limestone, so necessary in neutralizing the acid- 
ity of soils, amounting to 1,221,000 tons; and such 
savings have been maintained in China, Korea and Japan 
on more than five, and possibly more than nine, times 
the ten thousand square miles, through centuries. The 
phosphorus thus turned upon ninety thousand square 
miles would aggregate nearly thirteen million tons in a 
thousand years, which is less than the time the practice 
has been maintained, and is more phosphorus than would 
be carried in the entire rock phosphate thus far mined 
in the United States, were it all seventy-five per cent 
pure. 

The canalization of fifty thousand square miles of our 
Gulf and Atlantic coastal plain, and the utilization on 
the fields of the silts and organic matter, together with 
^he water, would mean turning to account a vast tonnage 
of plant food which is now wasting into the sea, and a 
correspondingly great increase of crop yield. There 
ought, and it would seem there must some time be pro- 
vided a way for sending to the sandy plains of Florida, 
and to the sandy lands between there and the Mississippi, 
large volumes of the rich silt and organic matter from this 
and other rivers, aside from that which should be applied 
systematically to building above flood plain the lands of 
the delta which are subject to overflow or are too low to 
permit adequate drainage. 



Pruvitfious Against Leaching. 



281 



It may appear to some that the application of such 
large volumes of water to fields, especially in countries 
of heavy rainfall, must result in great loss of plant food 
through leaching and surface drainage. But under the 
remarkable practices of these three nations this is certainly 
not the ease and it is highly important that our people 
should understand and appreciate the principles which un- 
derlie the practices they have almost uniformly adopted on 




Tig. 153.— Egg plants growing in the midst ol rice fields with soil continually 
saturated and water standing In sorface drain within 14 Inches of the 
surface, Japan. 



the areas devoted to rice irrigation. In the first place, their 
paddy fields are under-drained so that most of the water 
either leaves the soil through the crop, by surface evapor- 
ation, or it percolates through the subsoil into shallow 
drains. When water is passed directly from one rice 
paddy to another it is usually permitted some time after 
fertilization, when both soil and crop have had time to 
appropriate or fix the soluble plant food substances. Be- 
sides this, water is not turned upon the fields until the 



282 



Rice Culture in the Orient. 



time for transplanting the rice, when the plants are already 
provided with a strong root system and are capable of at 
once appropriating any soluble plant food which may 
develop about their roots or be carried downward over 
them. 

Although the drains are of the surface type and but 
eighteen inches to three feet in depth, they are sufficiently 
numerous and close so that, although the soil is continu- 
ously nearly filled with water, there is a steady percola- 





tei> ^fV r 


i^^ 


uKttiiSbf''^' -ifc - ^'^iJ-j^idSL^rr 




Ejj^^^ 


^pit^-^Ja^BMB 


H 



Pig. 164.— Watermelons, with the ground heavily mulched with straw, growing 
on low beds under conditions similar to those ol Fig, 153. 

tion of the fresh, fully aerated water carrying an abun- 
dance of oxygen into the soil to meet the needs of the 
roots, so that watermelons, egg plants, musk melons and 
taro are grown in the rotations on the small paddies 
among the irrigated rice after the manner seen in the illus- 
trations. In Pig. 153 each double row of egg plants is 
separated from the next by a narrow shallow trench 
which connects with a head drain and in which water was 
standing within fourteen inches of the surface. The 
same was true in the ease of the watermelons seen in 
Fig. 154, where the vines are growing on a thick layer of 



Drainage. 



283 



straw mulch which holds them from the moist soil and 
acts to conserve water by diminishing evaporation and 
through decay from the summer rains and leaching, serves 
as fertilizer for the crop. In Pig. 155 the view is along 
a pathway separating two head ditches between areas in 
watermelons and taro, carrying the drainage waters 
from the several furrows into the main ditches. Although 
the soil appeared wet the plants were vigorous and 



• 








m 


i 




g 


1 


1 




1 



Fig. 155.— Looking along a path between two head ditches separating patches 
of watermelons and taro, Japan. 

healthy, seeming in no way to suffer from insufficient 
drainage. 

These people have, therefore, given eflEeetive attention 
to the matter of drainage as well as irrigation and are 
looking after possible losses of plant food, as well as ways 
of supplying it. It is not alone where rice is grown that 
cultural methods are made to conserve soluble plant food 
and to reduce its loss from the field, for very often, where 
flooding is not practiced, small fields and beds, made 
■quite level, are surrounded by low raised borders which 



284 Rice Culture in the Orient. 

permit not only the whole of any rain to be retained upon 
the field when so desired, but it is completely distributed 
over it, thus causing the whole soil to be uniformly 
charged with moisture and preventing washing from one 
portion of the field to another. Such provisions are shown 
in Figs. 133 and 138. 

Extensive as is the acreage of irrigated rice in China, 
Korea and Japan, nearly every spear is transplanted; the 
largest and best crop possible, rather than the least labor 
and trouble, as is so often the case with us, determining 
their methods and practices. We first saw the fitting of 




Kg. 166.— Eesldence compound and farm bulldicgs of Mrs. Wu, Eashing, China. 

the rice nursery beds at Canton and again near Kashing 
in Chekiang province on the farm of Mrs. Wu, whose 
homestead is seen in Fig. 156. She had come with her 
husband from Ningpo after the ravages of the Taiping 
rebellion had swept from two provinces alone twenty mil- 
lions of people and settled on a small area of then va- 
cated land. As they prospered they added to their holding 
by purchase until about twenty-five acres were acquired, 
an area about ten times that possessed bj^ the usual pros- 
perous family in China. The widow was managing her 
place, one of her sons, although married, being still in 
school, the daughter-in-law living with her mother-in-law 
and helping in the home. Her field help during the sum- 
mer consisted of seven laborers and she kept four cows 
for the plowing and pumping of water for irrigation. The 



Yields and Cost. 285 

wages of the men were at the rate of $24, Mexican, for 
five summer months, together with their meals which were 
four each day. The casli outlay for the seven men was 
thus $14.4:5 of our currency per month. Ten years be- 
fore, such labor had been $30 per year, as compared with 
$50 at the time of our visit, or $12.90 and $21.50 of our 
currency, respectively. 

Her usual yields of rice were two piculs per mow, or 
twenty-six and two-thirds bushels per acre, and a wheat crop 




Fig. 157.— Pumping station on the farm ol Mrs. Wu, showing pump shelter, 
two power wheels connected with pumps, set at the end of a water 
channel leading from a canal. 

yielding half this amount, or some other, was taken from 
part of the land the same season, one fertilization answer- 
ing for the two crops. She stated that her annual ex- 
pense for fertilizers purchased was usuallj^ about $60, or 
$25.80 of our currency. The homestead of Mrs. Wu, 
Fig. 156, consists of a compound in the form of a large 
quadrangle surrounding a court closed on the south by a 
solid wall eight feet high. The structure is of earth brick 
with the roof thatched with rice straw. 

Our first visit here was April 19th. The nursery rice 
beds had been planted four days, sowing seed at the rate 



286 



Rice Culhdre in the Orient. 



of twenty bushels per acre. The soil had been very care- 
fully prepared and highly fertilized, the last treatment 
being a dressing of plant ashes so incompletely burned 
as to leave the surface coal black. The seed, scattered 
directly upon the surface, almost completely covered it 
and had been gently beaten barely into the dressing of 
ashes, using a wide, flat-bottom basket for the purpose. 
Each evening, if the night was likely to be cool, water 
was pumped over the bed, to be withdrawn the next day, 




Fig. 158. — Close view of power wheel witb cow attached, used in driving the 
Irrigation pump, one oJ the two seen in Fig. 157, 



if warm and sunny, permitting the warmth to be absorbed 
by the black surface, and a fresh supply of air to be 
drawn into the soil. 

Nearly a month later. May 14th, a second visit was 
made to this farm and one of the nursery beds of rice, 
as it then appeared, is seen in Fig. 159, the plants being 
about eight inches high and nearing the stage for trans- 
planting. The field beyond the bed had already been 
partly flooded and plowed, turning under "Chinese 
clover" to ferment as green manure, preparatory for the 
rice transplanting. On the opposite side of the bed and 



Nursery Bice Beds. 



287 




288 



Bice Culture in the Orient. 



in front of the residence, Fig. 156, flooding was in prog- 
ress in the furrows between the ridges formed after the 
previous crop of rice was harvested and upon which the 
crop of clover for green manure was grown. Immediately 
at one end of the two series of nursery beds, one of which 
is seen in Fig. 159, was the pumping plant seen in Fig. 
157, under a thatched shelter, with its two pumps in- 
stalled at the end of a water channel leading from the 
canal. One of these wooden pump powers, with the blind- 




Fig. 160.— Plowed field nearly fitted lor rice, and the smoothing, puiverlzinj 
harrow used lor tlie purpose, Chekiang province, China. 



folded cow attached, is reproduced in Fig. 158 and just 
beyond the animal's head may be seen the long handle 
dipper to which reference has been made, used for collect- 
ing excreta. 

]More than a month is saved for maturing and harvest- 
ing winter and earlj' spring crops, or in iitting the fields 
for rice, by this planting in nursery beds. The irrigation 
period for most of the land is cut short a like amount, sav- 
ing in both water and time. It is cheaper and easier to 
highly fertilize and prepare a small area for the nursery, 
while at the same time miich stronger and more uniform 
plants are secured than would be possible by sowing in the 
field. The labor of weeding and caring for the plants in 



Methods Suited to Conditiejns. 



289 



the nursery is far less than would be required in the field. 
It would be practically impossible to tit the entire rice 
areas as early in the season as the nursery beds are fitted, 
for the green manure is not yet grown and time is re- 
quired for composting or for decaying, if plowed under 
directly. The rice plants in the nursery are carried to a 
stage when they are strong feeders and when set into the 




Fig. 161. — Form of revolviDg wooden harrow for fitting flooded rice fields 
preparatory to transplanting. 



newly prepared, fertilized, clean soil of the field they are 
ready to feed strongly under these most favorable condi- 
tions. Both time and strength of plant are thus gained 
and these people are following what would appear to be 
the best possible practices under their condition of small 
holdings and dense population. 

With our broad fields, our machinery and few people, 
their system appeai-s to us crude and impossible, but cut 
our holdings to the size of theirs and the same stroke 
makes our machinery, even our plows, still more im- 

19 



290 



Bice Culture in the Orient. 



possible, and so the more one studies the environment of 
these people, thus far unavoidable, their numbers, what 
they have done and are doing, against what odds they 
have succeeded, the more dilHcult it becomes to see what 
course might have been better. 

How full with work is the month which precedes the 
transplanting of rice has been pointed out, — the making 
of the compost fertilizer; harvesting the wheat, rape and 
beans; distributing the compost over the fields, and their 
flooding and plowing. In Fig. 160 one of these fields is 




^£f.a3M.*^Cnriji!fe^.<aigri-j..jj^ijEigasfa^s-^...aa 



Fig. 



162 _Qjoup of Chinese women pulling rice in a nursery bed, tying tiie 
plants in bundles preparatory to transplanting. 



seen plowed, smoothed and nearly ready for the plants. 
The turned soil had been thoroughly pulverized, leveled 
and worked to the consistency of mortar, on the larger 
fields with one or another sort of harrow, as seen in Figs. 
160 and 161. This thorough puddling of the soil per- 
mits the plants to be quickly set and provides conditions 
which ensure immediate perfect contact for the roots. 

When the fields are ready women repair to the nurser- 
ies with their low fnur-legged bamboo stools, to pull the 
rice plants, carefully rinsing the soil from the roots, and 
then tie them into ]iundles of a size easily handled in 
transplanting, which are then distributed in the fields. 



Transplanting Bice. 



291 







f ^ 






















rig. 163.— Transplanting rice in China. Four views taken from the same 
point at intervals of fllteen minutes, showing the progress made during 
forty-five minutes. 



292 Bice Cultttre in the Orient. 

The work of transplanting may be done by groups of 
families changing work, a considerable number of them 
laboring together after the manner seen in Fig. 163, made 
from four snap shots taken from the same point at in- 
tervals of fifteen minutes. Long cords were stretched in 
the rice field six feet apart and each of the seven men was 
setting six rows of rice one foot apart, six to eight plants 
in a hill, and the hills eight or nine inches apart in the 
row. The bundle was held in one hand and deftly, with 
the other, the desired number of plants were selected with 
the fingers at the roots, separated from the rest and, with 
a single thrust, set in place in the row. There was no 
packing of earth about the roots, each hill being set with 
a single motion, which followed one another in quick suc- 
cession, completing one cross row of six hills after another. 
The men move backward across the field, completing one 
entire section, tossing the unused plants into the unset 
field. Then reset the lines to cover another section. We 
were told that the usual day's work of transplanting, for 
a man under these conditions, after the field is fitted and 
the plants are brought to him, is two mow or one-third of 
an acre. The seven men in this group would thus set 
two and a third acres per day and, at the wage j\Irs. Wu 
was paying, the cash outlay, if the help was hired, would 
be nearly 21 cents per acre. This is more cheaply than 
we are able to set cabbage and tobacco plants with our 
best machine methods. In Japan, as seen in Figs. 164 
and 165, the women participate in the work of setting 
the plants more than in China. 

After the rice has been transplanted its care, unlike that 
of our wheat crop, does not cease. It must be hoed, fer- 
tilized and watered. To facilitate the watering all fields 
have been leveled, canals, ditches and drains provided, 
and to aid in fertilizing and hoeing, the setting has been 
in rows and in hills in the row. 

The first working of the rice fields after the transplant- 
ing, as we saw it in Japan, consisted in spading between 
the hills with a four-tined hoe, apparently more for loosen- 



Cullivation. 



293 



ing the soil and aeration than for killing weeds. After 
this treatment the field was gone over again in the man- 
ner seen in Fig. 166, where the man is using his bare 
hands to smooth and level the stirred soil, taking care to 
eradicate ever\' weed, burying them beneath the mud, and 
to straighten each hill of rice as it is passed. Some- 
times the fingers are armed with bamboo claws to facili- 
tate the weeding. Machinery- in the form of revolving 
hand cultivators is recently coming into use in Japan, 
and two men using these are seen in Pig. 14. In these 




Fig. 164. — A group of Japanese women transplanting rice, in rainy "weatlier 
costume, at Fuiiuolia Experiment Station, Japan. 



cultivators the teeth are mounted on an axle so as to re- 
volve as the cultivator is pushed along the row. 

Fertilization for the rice crop receives the greatest atten- 
tion everj'where by these three nations and in no direction 
more than in maintaining the store of organic matter in 
the soil. The pink clover, to which reference has been 
made, Figs. 99 and 100, is extensively sowed after a crop 
of rice is harvested in the fall and comes into full bloom, 
readj^ to cut for compost or to turn under directly when 
the rice fields are plowed. Eighteen to twenty tons of 
this green clover are produced per acre, and in Japan 
this is usually applied to about three acres, the stubble 



294 



Rice Cult are in the Orient. 




M 

S 



Green Manuring. 



295 



and roots serving for the field producing the clover, thus 
giving a dressing of six to seven tons of green manure per 
acre, earrj-ing not less than 37 pounds of potassium ; 5 
pounds of phosphorus, and 58 pounds of nitrogen. 

Where the families are large and the holdings small, 
so they cannot spare room to grow the green manure crop, 
it is gathered on the mountain, weed and hill lands, or it 
may be cut in the canals. On our boat trip west from 







Fig. 166.— Smoothing tbe soil and pulling weeds after the flist working ol a 
field of transplanted rice, Japan. 

Soochow the last of Slay, many boats were passed carry- 
ing tons of the long green ribbon-like grass, cut and 
gathered from the bottom of the canal. To cut this grass 
men were working to their armpits in the water of the 
canal, using a crescent-shaped knife mounted like an 
anchor from the end of a 16-foot bamboo handle. This was 
shoved forward along the bottom of the canal and then 
drawn backward, cutting the grass, which rose to the sur- 
face where it was gathered upon the boats. Or material 
for green manure may be cut on grave, mountain or hiU 
lands, as described under Fig. 115. 



296 Rice Culture in the Orient. 

The straw of rice and other grain and the stems of any 
plant not usable as fuel may also be worked into the mud 
of rice fields, as may the chaff which is often scattered up- 
on the water after the rice is transplanted, as in Fig. 168. 

Reference has been made to the utilization of waste of 
various kinds in these countries to maintain the produc- 
tive power of their soils, but it is worth while, in the in- 
terests of western nations, as helping them to realize the 




Fig. 167.— Boat load of giass cut trom bottom of canal, to be used as green 
manure or in preparing compost fertilizer, Kiangsu, China. 

ultimate necessity of such economies, to state again, in 
more explicit terms, what Japan is doing. Dr. Kawaguchi, 
of the National Department of Agriculture and Com- 
merce, taking his data from their records, informed rae 
that Japan produced, in 1908, and applied to her fields, 
23,850,295 tons of human manure; 22,812,787 tons of 
compost; and she imported 753,074 tons of commercial 
fertilizers, 7000 of which were phosphates in one form 
or another. In addition to these she must have applied 
not less than 1,404,000 tons of fuel ashes and 10,185,500 
tons of green manure products grown on her hill and weed 
lands, and all of these applied to less than 14,000,000 



Fertilizing. 



297 



acres of cultivated field, aud it should be emphasized that 
this is done because as yet they have found no better way 
of permanently maintaining a fertility capable of feeding 
her millions. 

Besides fertilizing, transplanting and weeding the rice 
crop there is the enormous task of irrigation to be main- 
tained until the rice is nearly matured. Much of the 
water used is lifted by animal power and a large share of 
this is human. Fig. 169 shows two Chinese men in their 




Fig. 168.— Applying chafl to a rice field as a lertilizer. 



cool, capacious, nowhere-touching summer trousers fling- 
ing water with the swinging basket, and it is surprising 
the amount of water which may be raised three to four 
feet by this means. The portable spool windlass, in Figs. 
27 and 123, has been described, and Fig. 170 shows the 
quadrangular, cone-shaped bucket and sweep extensively 
used in Chihli. This man was supplying water sufBcient 
for the irrigation of half an acre, per day, lifting the water 
eight feet. 

The form of pump most used in China and the foot- 
power for working it are seen in Fig. 171. Three men 



298 



Rice Culture in the Orient. 



working a similar pump are seen in Fig. 150, a closer view 
of three men working the foot-power may be seen in Fig. 
42 and still another stands adjacent to a series of flooded 
fields in Fig. 172. Where this view was taken the old 
farmer informed us that two men, with this pump, lift- 
ing water three feet, were able to cover two mow of land 
with three inches of water in two hours. This is at the 




Fig. 



169.— Irrigation by means ol the swinging basket, Province of Chihll, 
China. 



rate of 2.5 acre-inches of water per ten hours per man, 
and for 12 to 15 cents, our currency, thus making sixteen 
acre-inches, or the season's supply of water, cost 77 to 96 
cents, where coolie labor is hired and fed. Such is the 
efficiency of human power applied to the Chinese pump, 
measured in American currency. 

This pump is simply an open box trough in which 
travels a wooden chain carrying a series of loosely fitting 
boards which raise the water from the canal, discharging 



Irrigating Bice. 



299 



it into the field. The size of the trough and of the buck- 
ets are varied to suit the power applied and the amount 
of water to be lifted. Crude as it appears there is nothing 
in western manufacture that can compete with it in first 
cost, maintenance or efficiency for Chinese conditions and 
nothing is more characteristic of all these people than 
their efficient, simple appliances of all kinds, which they 
have reduced to the lowest terms in every feature of con- 
struction and cost. The greatest results are accomplished 




rig. 170. — Well sweep and quadrangular, conical water bucket used for irriga- 
tion in Chilili. 



by the simplest means. If a canal must be bridged and it 
is too wide to be covered by a single span, the Chinese en- 
gineer may erect it at some convenient place and turn 
the canal under it when completed. This we saw in the 
case of a new railroad bridge near Sungkiang. The 
bridge was completed and the water had just been turned 
under it and was being compelled to make its own exca- 
vation. Great expense had been saved while traffic on 
the canal had not been obstructed. 

In the foot-power wheel of Japan all gearing is elimi- 
nated and the man walks the paddles themselves, as seen 



300 



Rice Culture in the Orient. 



in Fig. 173. Some of these wheels are ten feet in diam- 
eter, depending upon the hight the water must be lifted. 

Irrigation by animal power is extensively practiced in 
each of the three countries, employing mostly the type of 
power wheel shown in Fig. 158. The next illustration, Fig. 
174, shows the most common type of shelter seen in Che- 
kiang and Kiangsu provinces, which are there very numer- 










¥ig. 171. — Three-iDan Chinese foot-power and wooden chain pump 
used for irrigation in various parts of Cliiiia 



extensively 



ous. We counted as many as forty such shelters in a semi- 
circle of half a mile radius. They provide comfort for the 
animals during both sunshine and rain, for under no con- 
ditions must the water be permitted to run low on the rice 
fields, and everywhere their domestic animals receive kind, 
thoughtful treatment. 

In the less level sections, where streams have sufficient 
fall, current wheels are in common use, carrying buckets 
near their circumference arranged so as to fill when passing 



Irrigalinfi Rice. 



301 



through the water, and to empty after reaching the high- 
est level into a receptacle provided with a conduit which 
leads the water to the field. In Szeehwan province some 
of these current wheels are so large and gracefully con- 
structed as to strongly suggest Ferris wheels. A view of 
one of these we are permitted to present in Fig. 175, 
through the kindness of Rollin T. Chamberlin who took 




rig. 172.— Fields recently flooded with the Chinese foot-power chain pump 
preparatory to plowing lor rice. 

the photograph from which the engraving was prepared. 
This wheel which was some forty feet in diameter, was 
working when the snap shot was taken, raising the water 
and pouring it into the horizontal trough seen near the 
top of the wheel, carried at the summit of a pair of heavy 
poles standing on the far side of the wheel. From this 
trough, leading away to the left above the sky line, is the 
long pipe, consisting of bamboo stems joined together, for 
conveying the water to the fields. 



302 



Rice (hilture in the Orient. 



When the harvest time has come, notwithstanding the 
large acreage of grain, yielding hundreds of millions of 
bushels, the small, widely scattered holdings and the sur- 
face of the fields render all of our machine methods quite 
impossible. Even our grain cradle, which preceded the 
reaper, would not do, and the great task is still met with 
the old time sickle, as seen in Fig. 176, cutting the rice hill 
by hill, as it was transplanted. 




Fig. 173. — Japanese irrigation foot-wheel. 



Previous to the time for cutting, after the seed is well 
matured, the water is drawn ofE and the land permitted 
to dry and harden. The rainy season is not yet over and 
much care must be exercised in curing the crop. The 
bundles may be shocked in rows along the margins of the 
paddies, as seen in Fig. 176, or they may be suspended, 
heads down, from baml)oo poles as seen in Fig. 177. 

The threshing is accomplished by drawing the heads of 
the rice through the teeth of a metal comb mounted as 
seen at the right in Fig. 178, near the lower comer, be- 



Irrigating Rice. 



303 




Fig. 174.— Poirer-Theel shelter on bank ot canal, in Kiangsu province, Cliina. 




Fig. 175. — Large current water-wheel in use in Rzechwan province. China. 
Photograph by Rollin T. Uhamberl.n. 



304 



Rice Vulture in the Orient. 



hind the basket, where a man and woman are occupied in 
winnowing the dust and chaff from the grain by means 
of a large double fan. Fanning mills built on the prin- 
ciple of those used by our farmers and closely resembling 
them have long been used in both China and Japan. After 
the rice is threshed the grain must be hulled before it can 
serve as food, and the oldest and simplest method of pol- 
ishing used by the Japanese is seen in Fig. 179, where the 




Fig. 176.— Japanese farmers harvesting rice with the old-time sickle. 



friction of the grain upon itself does the polishing. A 
quantity of rice is poured into the receptacle when, with 
heavy blows, the long-headed plunger is driven into the 
mass of rice, thus forcing the kernels to slide over one 
another until, by their abrasion, the desired result is se- 
cured. The same method of polishing, on a larger scale, 
is accomplished where the plungers are worked by the 
weight of the body, a series of men stepping upon lever 
handles of weighted plungers, raising them and allowing 
them to fall under the force of the weight attached. Re- 



Uses of Bice Straw. 



305 



cently, however, mills worked by gasoline engines are in 
operation for both hulling and polishing, in Japan. 

The many uses to which rice straw is put in the econ- 
omies of these people make it almost as important as the 
rice itself. As food and bedding for cattle and horses; 
as thatching material for dwellings and other shelters; as 
fuel ; as a mulch ; as a source of organic matter in the 
soil, and as a fertilizer, it represents a money value which 




rig. 177.— Suspending rice bundles bom bamboo frames set np In the fields 
for curing the grain, preparatory to threshing, Japan. 



is very large. Besides these ultimate uses the rice straw 
is extensively employed in the manufacture of articles 
used in enormous quantities. It is estimated that not 
less than 188,700,000 bags such as are seen in Figs. 180 and 
181, worth $3,110,000 are made annually from the rice 
straw in Japan, for handling 346,150,000 bushels of 
cereals and 28,190,000 bushels of beans ; and besides these, 
great numbers of bags are employed in transporting fish 
and other prepared manures. 

In the prefecture of Hyogo, with 596 square miles of 
20 



306 



Rice Culture in the Orient. 



farm land, as compared with Rhode Island's 712 square 
miles, Hyogo farmers produced in 1906, on 265,040 acres, 
10,584,000 bushels of rice worth $16,191,400, securing an 
average yield of almost forty bushels per acre and a gross 
return of $61 for the grain alone. In addition to this, 
these farmers grew on the same land, the same season, at 




Fif. 178.— Winnowing rice in Japan, using the large double fan worked by a 
pair of bamboo handler. A metal comb for removing the riee from the 
straw stands at the right. 



least one other crop. Where this was barley the average 
yield exceeded twenty-six bushels per acre, worth $17. 

In connection with their farm duties these Japanese 
families manufactured, from a portion of their rice straw, 
at night and during the leisure hours of winter, 8,980,000 
pieces of matting and netting of different kinds having a 
market value of $262,000 ; 4,838,000 bags worth $185,000 ; 



Yields and Income. 



307 



8,742,000 slippers worth $3i,000 ; 6,25i,000 sandals worth 
$30,000 ; and miscellaneous articles worth $64,000. This 
is a gross earning of more than $21,000,000 from eleven 
and a half townships of farm land and the labor of the 




Fig. 179.— Large wooden mortar used for the polishing of rice in Japan. 



farmers' families, an average earning of $80 per acre on 
nearly three-fourths of the farm land of this prefect- 
ure. At this rate three of the four forties of our 160-acre 
farms should bring a gross annual income of $9,600 and 
the fourth forty should pay the expenses. 

At the Nara Experiment Station we were informed that 



308 



Rice Culture in the Orient. 




Fig. 180.— Sacking rice Id bags made from the rice straw, Japan. 




Pig. 181.— Loading, for shipment, rice put up In bags made trom the rice straw. 

Japan. 



Rotation of Crops. 



309 



the money value of a good crop of rice in that prefecture 
should be placed at ninety dollars per acre for the grain 
and eight dollars for the unmanufactured straw; thirty- 
six dollars per acre for the crop of naked barley and two 
dollars per acre for the straw. The farmers here prac- 
tice a rotation of rice and barley covering four or five 
years, followed by a summer crop of melons, worth $320 
per acre and some other vegetable instead of the rice on the 




Fig. 182.— A Japanese family gathering and threshing barley, grown as a 
■winter crop before rice. 



fifth or sixth year, worth eighty yen per tan, or $160 per 
acre. To secure green manure for fertilizing, soy beans 
are planted each year in the space between the rows of 
barley, the barley being planted in November. One week 
after the barley is harvested the soy beans, which produce 
a yield of 160 kan per tan, or 5290 pounds per acre, are 
turned under and the ground fitted for rice, At these rates 
the Nara farmers are producing on four-fifths or five- 
sixths of their rice lands a gross earning of $136 per acre 
annually, and on the other fifth or sixth, an earning of 
$480 per acre, not counting the annual crop of soy beans 



310 



Rice Culture in the Orient. 



used in maintaining the nitrogen and organic matter in 
their soils, and not counting their earnings from home 
manufactures. Can the farmers of our south Atlantic 
and Gulf Coast states, which are in the same latitude, 
sometime attain to this standard? We see no reason why 
they should not, but only with the best of irrigation, fer- 
tilization and proper rotation, with multiple cropping. 




XIII. 
SILK CULTUEE. 



Another of the great and in some ways one of the most 
remarkable industries of the Orient is that of silk produc- 
tion, and its manufacture into the most exquisite and 
beautiful fabrics in the world. Remarkable for its mag- 
nitude; for having had its birthplace apparently in oldest 
China, at least 2600 years B. C. ; for having been founded 
on the domestication of a wild insect of the woods; and 
for having lived through more than four thousand years, 
expanding until a $1,000,000 cargo of the product has 
been laid down on our western coast at one time and 
rushed by special fast express to New York City for the 
Christmas trade. 

Japan produced in 1907 26.072,000 pounds of raw silk 
from 17,154,000 bushels of cocoons, feeding the silkworms 
from mulberry leaves grown on 957,560 acres. At the 
export selling price of this silk in Japan the crop repre- 
sents a money value of $124,000,000, or more than two 
dollars per capita for the entire population of the Em- 
pire ; and engaged in the care of the silkworms, as seen in 
Figs. 184, 185, 186 and 187, there were, in 1906, 1,407,766 
families or some 7,000,000 people. 

Richard's geography of the Chinese Empire places the 
total export of raw silk to all countries, from China, in 
1905, at 30,413,200 pounds, and this, at the Japanese ex- 
port price, represents a value of $145,000,000. Richard 
also states that the value of the annual Chinese export of 
silk to France amounts to 10,000.000 pounds sterling and 



312 



Silk Culture. 



that this is but twelve per cent of the total, from which it 
appears that her total export alone reaches a value near 
$400,000,000. 

The use of silk in wearing apparel is more general among 
the Chinese than among the Japanese, and with China's 
eightfold greater population, the home consumption of silk 
must be large indeed and her annual production must much 




tSsf-^ESfealtiirf .1, 



Pig. 184. — Eemovlng slllrworm eggs from sheets ol paper where they were 
laid, preparatory for hatching, Japan. 



exceed that of Japan. Hosie places the output of raw 
silk in Szechwan at 5,439,500 pounds, which is nearly a 
quarter of the total output of Japan, and silk is exten- 
sively grown in eight other provinces, which together have 
an area nearly fivefold that of Japan. It would appear, 
therefore, that a low estimate of China's annual produc- 
tion of raw silk must be some 120,000,000 pounds, and 
this, with the output of Japan and Korea, would make a 
product for the three countries probably exceeding 
150,000,000 pounds annually, representing a total value of 
perhaps $700,000,000; quite equalling in value the wheat 



Feeding Silkworms. 



313 



crop of the United States, but produced on less than one- 
eighth of the area. 

According to the observations of Count Dandola, the 
worms which contribute to this vast earning are so small 
that some 700,000 of them weigh at hatching only one 
pound, but they grow very rapidly, shed their skins four 
times, weighing 15 pounds at the time of the first moult, 







Fig. 186.— reeding slllrworms. One of the 16 bamboo trays, on which the silli- 
worms are feeding, has been removed from the raclcs and Japanese girls 
are spreading over it a Iresh supply ot mulberry leaves. 

94 pounds at the second, 400 pounds at the third, 1628 
pounds at the fourth moulting and when mature have 
come to weigh nearly five tons — 9500 pounds. But in 
making this growth during about thirty-six days, accord- 
ing to Paton, the 700,000 worms have eaten 105 pounds 
by the time of the first moult ; 315 pounds by the second ; 
1050 pounds by the third ; 3150 pounds by the fourth, and 
in the final period, before spinning, 19,215 po\mds, thus 
consuming in all nearly twelve tons of mulberry leaves 
in producing nearly five tons of live weight, or at the rate 



314 Sill- Culture. 

of two and a half pounds of green leaf to one pound of 
growth. 

According to Paton, the cocoons from the 700,000 worms 
would weigh between 1400 and 2100 pounds and these, 
according to the observations of Hosie in the province of 
Szechwan, would yield about one-twelfth their weight of 
raw silk. On this basis the one pound of worms hatched 
from the eggs would yield between 116 and 175 pounds of 



WM 




1 


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Kg. 186.— Providing places for silkworms to spin their cocoons. 

raw silk, worth, at the Japanese export price for 1907, 
between .$550 and .$832, and 164 pounds of green mul- 
berry leaves would be required to produce a pound of silk. 
A Chinese banker in Chekiang province, with whom we 
talked, stated that the young worms which would hatch 
from the eggs spread on a sheet of paper twelve by eighteen 
inches would consume, in coming to maturity, 2660 
pounds of mulberry leaves and would spin 21.6 pounds of 
silk. This is at the rate of 123 pounds of leaves to one 
pound of silk. The Japanese crop for 1907, 26,072,000 
pounds, produced on 957,560 acres, is a mean yield of 



Yields of Mulberries. 315 

27.23 pounds of raw silk per acre of mulberries, and this 
would require a mean jdeld of 4465 pounds of green mul- 
berry- leaves per acre, at the rate of 164 pounds per pound 
of silk. 

Ordinary silk in these countries is produced largely 
from three varieties of mulberries, and from them there 
may be three pickings of leaves for the rearing of a spring, 
summer and autumn crop of silk. "We learned at the 
Nagoya Experiment Station, Japan, that there good spring 



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Fig. 187.— Selecting the best cocoons, male and lemale determined by the shape 
and size, for purposes of breeding. 

yields of mulberrj' leaves are at the rate of 400 kan, the 
second crop, 150 kan, and the third crop, 250 kan per tan, 
making a total yield of over thirteen tons of green leaves 
per acre. This, however, seems to be materially higher 
than the average for the Empire. 

In Fig. 188 is a near view of a mulberrj^ orchard in 
Chekiang province, which has been very heavily fertilized 
with canal mud, and which was at the stage for cutting the 
leaves to feed the first crop of silkworms. A bundle of 
cut limbs is in the crotch of the front tree in the view. 



316 



Silk Culture. 



Those who raise mulberry leaves are not usually the feed- 
ers of the silkworms and the leaves from this orchard were 
being sold at one dollar, Mexican, per picul, or 32.25 cents 
per one hundred pounds. The same price was being paid 
a week later in the vicinity of Nanking, Kiangsu province. 
The mulberry trees, as they appear before coming into 
leaf in the early spring, may be seen in Fig. 189. The 
long limbs are the shoots of the last year's growth, from 
which at least one crop of leaves had been picked, and in 
healthy orchards they may have a length of two to three 




Pig. 188. — A near view of a mulberry orcbard in Chekiang province, China. 



feet. An orchard from a portion of which the limbs had 
just been cut, presented the appearance seen in Fig. 190. 
These trees were twelve to fifteen years old and the en- 
largements on the ends of the limbs resulted from the fre- 
quent pruning, year after year, at nearly the same place. 
The ground under these trees was thickly covered with a 
growth of pink clover just coming into bloom, which would 
be spaded into the soil, providing nitrogen and organic 
matter, whose decay would liberate potash, phosphorus 
and other mineral plant food elements for the crop. 
In Fig. 191 three rows of mulberry trees, planted four 



Pruning of Miilhciri/ Trees. 



317 




rig. 189.— Near view ol mulberry tree many years old, showing limbs of the 
last year's growth which will be cut close to the old wood when in ful] 
leaf. 



feet apart, stand on a narrow embankment raised four 
feet, partly through adjusting the surrounding fields for 
rice, and partly by additions of canal mud used as a fer- 
tilizer. On either side of the mulberries is a crop of wind- 



318 



8ilk Culture. 




s 
I 



Cultivating Midherries. 319 

sor beans, and on the left a crop of rape, both of which 
would be hai-vested in early June, the ground where they 
stand flooded, plowed and transplanted to rice. This and 
the other mulberry views were taken in the extensively 
canalized portion of China represented in Pig. 52. The 
farmer owning this orchard had just finished cutting two 
large bundles of limbs for the sale of the leaves in the 
village. He stated that his first crop ordinarily yields 
from three to as many as twenty piculs per mow, but that 
the second crop seldom exceeded two to three piculs. The 
first and second crop of leaves, if yielding together twentj^- 
three piculs per mow, would amount to 9.2 tons per acre, 
worth, at the price named, $59.34. ^Mulberrj' leaves must 
be delivered fresh as soon as gathered and must be fed 
the same day, the limbs, when stripped of their leaves, at 
the place where these are sold, are tied into bundles and 
resen'ed for use as fuel. 

In the south of China the mulberry is grown from low 
cuttings rooted by layering. We have before spoken of 
our five hours ride in the Canton delta region, on the 
steamer Nanning, through extensive fields of low mulberry 
then in full leaf, which were first mistaken for cotton 
nearing the blossom stage. This form of mulberry is seen 
in Fig. 43, and the same method of pruning is practiced in 
southern Japan. In middle Japan high pruning, as in 
Ckekiang and Kiangsu provinces, is followed, but in 
northern Japan the leaves are picked directly, as is the 
case with the last crop of leaves everjTvhere, pruning not 
being practiced in the more northern latitudes. 

Not all silk produced in these northern countries is 
from the domesticated Bombyx mori, large amounts being 
obtained from the spinnings of wild silkworms feeding upon 
the leaves of species of oak growing on the mountain and 
hill lands in various parts of China, Korea and Japan. In 
China the collections in largest amount are reeled from 
the cocoons of the tussur worm (Antlieraea pernyi) gath- 
ered in Shantung. Honan, Kweichow and Szechwan prov- 
inces. In the hilly parts of Manchuria also this industry 



320 



Silk CuUure. 




Wild Silkworms. 321 

is attaining large proportions, the cocoons being sent to 
Chefoo in the Shantung province, to be woven into pongee 
silk. 

j\I. Randot has estimated the annual crop of wild silk 
cocoons in Szechwan at 10,180,000 pounds, although in the 
opinion of Alexander Hosie much of this may come from 
KweichoTT. Eichard places the export of raw wild silk 
from the whole of China proper, in 1904, at 4,400.000 
pounds. This would mean not less than 75,300,000 pounds 
of wild cocoons and may be less than half the home con- 
sumption. 

From data collected by Alexander Hosie it appears that 
in 1899 the export of raw tussur silk from ^Manchuria, 
through the port of Newchwang bj' steamer alone, was 
1,862,448 pounds, valued at $1,721,200, and the production 
is increasing rapidly. The export from the same port the 
previous year, by steamer, was 1,046,704 pounds. This all 
comes from the hilly and mountain lands south of Muk- 
den, lying between the Liao plain on the west and the Yalu 
river on the east, covering some five thousand square miles, 
which we crossed on the Antung-Mukden railwaj". 

There are two broods of these wild silkworms each sea- 
son, between early ilay and early October. Cocoons of 
the fall brood are kept through the winter and when the 
moths come forth they are caused \o lay their eggs on 
pieces of cloth and when the worms are hatched they are 
fed until the first moult upon the succulent new oak leaves 
gathered from the hills, after which the worms are taken 
to the low oak growth on the hills where they feed them- 
selves and spin their cocoons under the cover of leaves 
drawn about them. 

The moths reserved from the first brood, after becoming 
fertile, are tied by means of threads to the oak bushes 
where they deposit the eggs which produce the second crop 
of tussur silk. To maintain an abundance of succulent 
leaves within reach the oaks are periodically cut back. 

Thus these plain people, patient, frugal, unshrinking 

21 



322 Silk Culture. 

from toil, the basic units of three of the oldest nations, go 
to the uncultivated hill lands and from the wild oak and 
the millions of insects which they help to feed upon it, not 
only create a valuable export trade but procure material 
for clothing, fuel, fertilizer and food, for the large chry- 
salides, cooked in the reeling of the silk, may be eaten at 
once or are seasoned with sauce to be used later. Besides 
this, the last unreelable portion of each cocoon is laid 
aside to be manufactured into silk wadding and into soft 
mattresses for caskets upon which the wealthy lay their 
dead. 



XIV. 
THE TEA INDUSTRY. 



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

So far as may be judged from the success of the most 
thorough sanitarj^ measures thus far instituted, and tak- 
ing into consideration the inherent difficulties which must 
increase enormously with increasing populations, it ap- 
pears inevitable that modern methods must ultimately fail 
in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety must be se- 
cured in some manner having the equivalent effect of 
boiling water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races, 
and which destroys active disease germs at the latest 
moment before using. And it must not be overlooked that 
the boiling of drinking water in China and Japan has been 
demanded quite as much because of congested rural popu- 
lations as to guard against such dangers in large cities, 
while as yet our sanitary engineers have dealt only with 
the urban phases of this most vital problem and chiefly, 



324 



The Tea Industry. 



too, thus far, only where it has been possible to procure 
the water supply in comparatively unpopulated hill lands. 
But such opportunities cannot remain available indefi- 
nitely, any more than they did in China and Japan, and 
already typhoid epidemics break out in our large cities 
and citizens are advised to boil their drinking water. 

If tea drinking in the family is to remain general in 
most portions of the world, and especially if it shall in- 
crease in proportion to population, there is great industrial 




pig. 192.— Near view of tea garden with ground heavily mulched with straw, 
adjoining a Japanese tarm village. 



and commercial promise for China, Korea and Japan in 
their tea industry if they will develop tea culture still 
further over the extensive and still unused flanks of the 
hill lands; improve their cultural methods; their man- 
ufacture ; and develop their export trade. They have the 
best of climatic and soil conditions and people sufficiently 
capable of enormously expanding the industry. Both im- 
provement and expansion of methods along all essential 
lines, are needed, enabling them to put upon the market 
pure teas of thoroughly uniform grades of guaranteed 
qualit.y, and with these the maintenance of an international 



A Fitting Industry. 325 

code of rigid ethics which shall secure to all concerned a 
square deal and a fair division of the profits. 

The production of rice, silk and tea are three industries 
which these nations are preeminently circumstanced and 
qualified to economically develop and maintain. Other 
nations may better specialize along other lines which fit- 
ness determines, and the time is coming when maximum 
production at minimum cost as the result of clean robust 
living that in every way is worth while, will determine 
lines of social progress and of international relations. With 
the vital awakening to the possibility of and necessity for 
world peace, it must be recognized that this can b3 nothing 
less than universal, industrial, commercial, intellectual 
and. religious, in addition to making impossible forever the 
bloody carnage that has ravaged the world through all the 
centuries. 

With the extension of rapid transportation and more 
rapid communication throughout the world, we are fast 
entering the state of social development which will treat 
the whole world as a mutually helpful, harmonious indus- 
trial unit. It must be recognized that in certain regions, 
because of peculiar fitness of soil, climate and people, need- 
ful products can be produced there better and enough 
more cheaply than elsewhere to pay the cost of transpor- 
tation. If China, Korea and Japan, with parts of India, 
can and will produce the best and cheapest silks, teas or 
rice, it must be for the greatest good to seek a mutually 
helpful exchange, and the erection of impassable tariff bar- 
riers is a declaration of war and cannot make for world 
peace and world progress. 

The date of the introduction of tea culture into China 
appears unknown. It was before the beginning of the 
Christian era and tradition would place it more than 2700 
years earlier. The Japanese definitely date its introduc- 
tion into their islands as in the year 805 A. D., and state 
its coming to them from China. However and whenever 
tea growing originated in these countries, it long ago at- 
tained and now maintains large proportions. In 1907 



326 



The Tea Industry. 



Japan had 12J:,482 acres of land occvipied by tea gardens 
and tea plantations. These produced 60,877,975 pounds 
of cured tea, giving a mean yield of 489 pounds per acre. 
Of the more than sixty million pounds of tea produced an- 
nually on nearl.y two hundred square miles in Japan, less 
than twenty-two million pounds are consumed at home, 
the balance being exported at a cash value, in 1907, of 
$6,809,122, or a mean of sixteen cents per pound. 




Pig. 193.— Looking across a tea plantation located on the flanks of wooded 
liiU lands rising in the background, Japan. 



In China the volume of tea produced annually is much 
larger than in Japan. Hosie places the annual export 
from Szechwan into Tibet alone at 40,000,000 pounds and 
this is produced largely in the mountainous portion of the 
province west of the Min river. Richard places her direct 
export to foreign countries, in 1905, at 176,027,255 pounds ; 
and in 1906 at 180,271,000 pounds, so that the annual ex- 
port must exceed 200,000,000 pounds, and her total prod- 
uct of cured tea must be more than 400,000,000. 



Tea Bu.shfs 



327 



The general appearanee of tea bushes as they are grown 
in Japim is indicated in Fig. 192 The form of the bushes, 
the shape and size of the leaves and the dense green, shiny 
foliage quite suggests our box, so much used in borders and 
hedges. AVhen the bushes are young, not covering the 
ground, other crops are grown between the rows, but as the 




Fig. 194. — Group of Japanese women picking leaves of the tea plant. 



bushes attain their full size, standing after trimming, 
waist to breast high, the ground between is usually thickly 
covered with straw, leaves or grass and weeds from the 
hill lands, which serve as a mulch, as a fertilizer, as a 
means of preventing washing on the hillsides, and to force 
the rain to enter the soil uniformly where it falls. 

Quite a large per cent of the tea bushes are grown on 
small, scattering, irregular areas about dwellings, on land 



328 



The Tea Industry. 



not readily tilled, but there are also many tea plantations 
of considerable size, presenting the appearance seen in 
Fig. 193. After each picking of the leaves the bushes are 
trimmed back with pruning shears, giving the rows the 
appearance of carefully trimmed hedges. 




Fig. 195.— Weighing the Ircshly plcted tea leaves In Japan. 

The tea leaves are hand picked, generally by women and 
girls, after the manner seen in Fig. 194, where they are 
gathering the tender, newly-formed leaves into baskets to 
be weighed fresh, as seen in Fig. 195. 

Three crops of leaves are usually gathered each season, 
the first yielding in Japan one hundred kan per tan, the 



Tea Curing. 329 

second fifty kan and the third eighty kan per tan. This is 
at the rate of 3307 pounds, 1653 pounds, and 2645 pounds 
per acre, making a total of 7605 pounds for the season, 
from which the grower realizes from a little more than 
2.2 to a little more than 3 cents per pound of the green 
leaves, or a gross earning of $167 to $209.50 per acre. 

We were informed that the usual cost for fertilizers for 
the tea orchards was 15 to 20 yen per tan, or $30 to $40 
per acre per annum, the fertilizer being applied in the 
fall, in the early spring and again after the first picking 
of the leaves. While the tea plants are yet small one win- 
ter crop and one summer crop of vegetables, beans or bar- 
ley are grown between the rows, these giving a return of 
some forty dollars per acre. Where the plantations are 
given good care and ample fertilization the life of a plan- 
tation may be prolonged continuously, it is said, through 
one hundred or more years. 

During our walk from Joji to Kowata, along a country 
road in one of the tea districts, we passed a tea-curing 
house. This was a long rectangular, one-story building 
with twenty furnaces arranged, each under an open win- 
dow, around the sides. In front of each heated furnace 
with its tray of leaves, a Japanese man, wearing only a 
breech cloth, and in a state of profuse perspiration, was 
busy rolling the tea leaves between the palms of his hands. 

At another place we witnessed the making of the low 
grade dust tea, which is prepared from the leaves of bushes 
which must be removed or from those of the pnmings. In 
this case the dried bushes with their leaves were being 
beaten with flails on a threshing floor. The dust tea thus 
produced is consumed by the poorer people. 



XV. 
ABOUT TIENTSIN. 



On the 6th of June we left central China for Tientsin 
and further north, sailing by coastwise steamer from 
Shanghai, again plowing through the turbid waters which 
give literal exactness to the name Yellow Sea. Our steamer 
touched at Tsingtao, taking on board a body of German 
troops, and again at Chefoo, and it was only between these 
two points that the sea was not strongly turbid. Nor was 
this all. From early morning of the 10th until we an- 
chored at Tientsin, 2 :30 P. M., our course up the winding 
Pei ho was against a strong dust-laden wind which left 
those who had kept to the deck as grey as though they had 
ridden by automobile through the Colorado desert; so the 
soils of high interior Asia are still spreading eastward by 
flood and by wind into the valleys and far over the coastal 
plains. Over large areas between Tientsin and Peking 
and at other points northward toward ]\Iukden trees and 
shrubs have been systematically planted in rectangular 
hedgerow lines, to check the force of the winds and reduce 
the drifting of soils, planted fields occupying the spaces 
between. 

It was on this trip that we met Dr. Evans of Sungking, 
Szechwan province. His wife is- a physician practicing 
among the Chinese women, and in discussing the probable 
rate of increase of population among the Chinese, it was 
stated that she had learned through her practice that very 
many mothers had borne seven to eleven children and yet 
but one, two or at most three, were living. It was said 



Taxes. 331 

there are many customs and practices which determine this 
high mortalitjr among children, one of which is that of feed- 
ing them meat before they have teeth, the mother masticat- 
ing for the children, with the result that often fatal con- 
vulsions follow. A Scotch physician of long experience in 
Shantung, who took the steamer at Tsingtao, replied to mj 
question as to the usual size of families in his circuit, "I 
do not know. It depends on the crops. In good years the 
number is large ; in times of famine the girls especially are 
disposed of, often permitted to die when very young for 
lack of care. IMany are sold at such times to go into other 
provinces." Such statements, however, should doubtless 
be taken with much allowance. If all the details were 
known regarding the cases which have served as founda- 
tions for such reports, the matter might appear in quite 
a different light from that suggested by such cold 
recitals. 

Although land taxes are high in China Dr. Evans in- 
formed me that it is not infrequent for the same tax to be 
levied twice and even three times in one year. Inquiries 
regarding the land taxes among farmers in ditferent parts 
of China showed rates running from three cents to a dollar 
and a half, ilexican, per mow; or from about eight cents to 
$3.87 gold, per acre. At these rates a forty acre farm 
would pay from $3.20 to $154.80, and a quarter section 
four times these amounts. Data collected by Consul-Gen- 
eral E. T. Williams of Tientsin indicate that in Shantung 
the land tax is about one dollar per acre, and in Chihli, 
twenty cents. In Kiangsi province the rate is 200 to 300 
cash per mow, and in Kiangsu, from 500 to 600 cash per 
mow, or, according to the rate of exchange given on page 
76, from 60 to 80 cents, or 90 cents to $1.20 per acre in 
Kiangsi ; and $1.50 to $2.00 or $1.80 to $2.40 in Kiangsu 
province. The lowest of these rates would make the land 
tax on 160 acres. $96, and the highest would place it at 
$384, gold. 

In Japan the taxes are paid quarterly and the combined 
amount of the national, prefectural and village assessments 



332 About Tientsin. 

usually aggregates about ten per cent of the government 
valuation placed on the land. The mean valuation placed 
on the irrigated fields, excluding Formosa and Karafuto, 
was in 1907, 35.35 yen per tan; that of the upland fields, 
9.40 yen, and the genya and pasture lands were given a 
valuation of .22 yen per tan. These are valuations of 
$70.70, $18.80 and $.44, gold, per acre, respectively, and the 
taxes on forty acres of paddy field would be $282.80; 
$75.20 on forty acres of upland field, and $1.76, gold, on 
the same area of the genya and weed lands. 

In the villages, where work of one or another kind is 
done for pay. Dr. Evans stated that a woman's wage 
might not exceed $8, Mexican, or $3.44, gold, per year, and 
when we asked how it could be worth a woman's while to 
work a whole year for so small a sum, his reply was, "If 
she did not do this she would earn nothing, and this would 
keep her in clothes and a little more." A cotton spinner 
in his church would procure a pound of cotton and on re- 
turning the yam would receive one and a quarter pounds 
of cotton in exchange, the quarter pound being her com- 
pensation. 

Dr. Evans also described a method of rooting slips from 
trees, practiced in various parts of China. The under side 
of a branch is cut, bent upward and split for a short dis- 
tance ; about this is packed a ball of moistened earth 
wrapped in straw to retain the soil and to provide for 
future watering; the whole may then be bound with strips 
of bamboo for greater stability. In this way slips for 
new mulberry orchards are procured. 

At eight o'clock in the morning we entered the mouth 
of the Pei ho and wound westward through a vast, nearly 
sea-level, desert plain and in both directions, far toward 
the horizon, huge white stacks of salt dotted the surface 
of the Taku Government salt fields, and revolving in the 
wind were great numbers of horizontal sail windmills, 
pumping sea water into an enormous acreage of evapora- 
tion basins. In Fig. 196 may be seen five of the large- 



Salt iror/rs-. 



333 



salt stacks and six of the wind- 
mills, together with many smaller 
piles of salt. Fig. 197 is a closer 
view of the evaporation hasins with 
piles of salt scraped from the sur- 
face after the mother liquor had 
heen drained awaj'. The wind- 
mills, which were working one, 
sometimes two, of the large wooden 
chain pumps, were some thirty 
feet in diameter and lifted the 
hrine from tide-water basins into 
those of a second and third higher 
level where the second and final 
concentration occurred. These 
windmills, crude as they appear in 
Fig. 198, are nevertheless efficient, 
cheaply constructed and easily con- 
trolled. The eight sails, each six 
by ten feet, were so hung as to 
take the wind through the entire 
revolution, tilting automatically 
to receive the wind on the opposite 
face the moment the edge passed 
the critical point. Some 480 feet 
of sail surface were thus spread to 
the wind, working on a radius of 
fifteen feet. The horizontal drive 
wheel had a diameter of ten feet, 
carried eighty-eight wooden cogs 
which engaged a pinion with fifteen 
leaves, and there were nine arms 
on the reel at the other end of the 
shaft which drove the chain. The 
boards or buckets of the chain 
pump were six b.v twelve inches, 
placed nine inches apart, and with 
a fair breeze the pump ran full. 



384 



About Tientsin. 



Enormous quantities of salt are thus cheaply manufac- 
tured through wind, tide and sun power directed by the 
cheapest human labor. Before reaching Tientsin we passed 
the Government storage yards and counted two hundred 
stacks of salt piled in the open, and more than a third of 
the yard had been passed before beginning the count. The 
average content of each stack must have exceeded 3000 




rig. 19V.— Near view of evaporating basiDS with piles ol salt ready to be 
removed from the fields. 



cubic feet of salt, and more than 40,000,000 pounds must 
have been stored in the yards. Armed guards in military 
uniform patrolled the alleyways day and night. Long 
strips of matting laid over the stacks were the only shelter 
against rain. 

Throughout the length of China's seacoast, from as far 
north as beyond Shanhaikwan, south to Canton, salt is 
manufactured from sea water in suitable places. In 
Szechwan province, we learn from the report of Consul- 
General Hosie, that not less than 300,000 tons of salt are 



CJiincsc Windmill. 'i'.ii) 

annually manufactured there, largely from brine raised 
by animal power from wells seven hundred to more than 
two thousand feet deep. 

Hosie describes the operations at a well more than two 
thousand feet deep, at Tzeliutsing. In the basement of a 
power-house which sheltered forty water buifaloes, a huge 




Pig. 198. — Sail windmill used in pumping brine at tlie Talm Government salt 
woriis, Chilili, Olnina. 



bamboo drum twelve feet high, sixty feet in circumference, 
was so set as to revolve on a vertical axis propelled by 
four cattle drawing from its circumference. A hemp rope 
was wound about this drum, six feet from the ground, 
passing out and under a pulley at the well, then up and 
around a wheel mounted sixty feet above and descended 
to the bucket made from bamboo stems four inches in diam- 
eter and nearly sixty feet long, which dropped with 



336 About Tientsin. 

great speed to the bottom of the well as the rope unwound. 
When the bucket reached the bottom four attendants, each 
with a buffalo in readiness, hitched to the drum and drove 
at a running pace, during fifteen minutes, or until the 
bucket was raised from the well. The buffalo were then 
unhitched and, while the bucket was being emptied and 
again dropped to the bottom of the well, a fresh relay 
were brought to the drum. In this way the work con- 
tinued night and day. 

The brine, after being raised from the well, was emptied 
into distributing reservoirs, flowing thence through bam- 
boo pipes to the evaporating sheds where round bottomed, 
shallow iron kettles four feet across were set in brick 
arches in which jets of natural gas were burning. 

Within an area some sixty miles square there are more 
than a thousand brine and twenty fire wells from which 
fuel gas is taken. The mouths of the fire wells are closed 
with masonry, out from which bamboo conduits coated 
with lime lead to the various furnaces, terminating with 
iron burners beneath the kettles. Remarkable is the fact 
that in the city of Tzeliutsing, both these brine and the 
fire wells have been operated in the manufacture of salt 
since before Christ was bom. 

The forty water buffalo are worth $oO to $40 per head 
and their food fifteen to twenty cents per day. The cost 
of manufacturing this salt is placed at thirteen to fourteen 
cash per catty, to which the Government adds a tax of 
nine cash more, making the cost at the factory from 82 
cents to $1.15, gold, per hundred pounds. Salt manufac- 
ture is a Government monopoly and the product must be 
sold either to Government officials or to merchants who 
have bought the exclusive right to supply certain districts. 
The importation of salt is prohibited by treaties. For the 
salt tax collection China is divided into eleven circuits each 
having its own source of supply and transfer of salt from 
one circuit to another is forbidden. 

The usual cost of salt is said to vary between one and 
a half and four cash per catty. The retail price of salt 



Along the Pel ho. 



337 



ranges from three-fourths to three cents per pound, fully 
twelve to fifteen times the cost of manufacture. The 
annual production of salt in the Empire is some 1,860,000 
tons, and in 1901 salt paid a tax close to ten million 
dollars. 

Beyond the salt fields, toward Tientsin, the banks of 
the river were dotted at short intervals with groups of 
low, almost windowless houses, Fig. 199, built of earth 
brick plastered with clay on sides and roof, made more 




Fig. 199. — Chinese village on the banfe ol the Pel ho. Province of Chihli. 



resistant to rain Ijy an admixture of chafi and cut straw, 
and there was a remarkable freshness of look about them 
which we learned was the result of recent preparations 
made for the rainy season about to open. Beyond the 
first of these villages came a stretch of plain dotted thickly 
and far with innumerable grave mounds, to which refer- 
ence has been made. For nearly an hour we had traveled 
up the river before there was any material vegetation, the 
soil being too saline apparently to permit growth, but 
beyond this, crops in the fields and gardens, with some 
fruit and other trees, formed a fringe of varying width 

22 



338 About Tientsin. 

along the banks. Small fields of transplanted rice on both 
banks were frequent and often the land was laid out in 
beds of two levels, carefully graded, the rice occupying 
the lower areas, and wooden chain pumps were being 
worked by hand, foot and animal power, irrigating both 
riee and garden crops. 

In the villages were many stacks of earth compost, of 
the Shantung tyjiQ; manure middens were common and 
donkeys drawing heavy stone rollers followed by men 
with large wooden mallets, were going round and 
round, pulverizing and mixing the dry earth compost and 
the large earthen brick from dismantled kangs, preparing 
fertilizer for the new series of crops about to be planted, 
following the harvest of wheat and barley. Large boat- 
loads of these prepared fertilizers were moving on the river 
and up the canals to the fields. 

Toward the coast from Tientsin, especially in the coun- 
try traversed by the railroad, there was little produced 
except a short grass, this being grazed at the time of our 
visit and, in places, cut for a very meagre crop of hay. 
The productive cultivated lands lie chiefly along the rivers 
and canals or other water courses, where there is better 
drainage as well as water for irrigation. The extensive, 
close canalization that characterizes parts of Kiangsu and 
Chekiang provinces is lacking here and for this reason, 
in part, the soil is not so productive. The fuller canaliza- 
tion, the securing of adequate drainage and the gaining 
of complete control of the flood waters which flow through 
this vast plain during the rainy season constitute one of 
China's most important industrial problems which, when 
properly solved, must vastly increase her resources. Dur- 
ing our drive over the old Peking-Taku road saline deposits 
were frequently observed which had been brought to the 
surface during the dry season, and the city engineer of 
Tientsin stated that in their efforts at parking portions 
of the foreign concessions they had found the trees dying 
after a few years when their roots began to penetrate the 



Saline Tracts. 



339 



more saline subsoil, but that since they had opened canals, 
improviag the drainage, trees were no longer dying. There 
is little doubt that proper drainage by means of canals, 
and the irrigation which would go with it, would make 
all of these lands, now more or less saline, highly produc- 
tive, as are now those contiguous to the existing water 
courses. 







-j« 










ffS 


g^^^ 






^M 


K 


^^^M 


^^^77 




9 


1 


ffi 


m 




1 


1 


9 


1 



rig. 200.— Cliina's method oJ shallow cultivation, producing an earth mulch to 
conserve soil moisture. 



It had rained two days before our drive over the Taku 
road and when we applied for a conveyance the proprietor 
doubted whether the roads were passible, as he had been 
compelled to send out an extra team to assist in the return 
of one which had been stalled during the previous night. 
It was finally arranged to send an extra horse with us. 
The rainy season had just begun but the deep trenching 
of the roads concentrates the water in them and greatly 
intensifies the trouble. In one of the little hamlets through 
which we passed the roadway was trenched to a depth of 
three to four feet in the middle of the narrow street, 
leaving only five feet for passing in front of the dwellings 



MO 



About Tientsin. 



on either side, and in this trench our carriage moved 
through mud and water nearly to the hubs. 

Between Tientsin and Peking, in the early morning 
after a rain of the night before, we saw many farmers 
working their tields with the broad hoes, developing an 
earth mulch at the tirst possible moment to conserve their 
much needed moisture. Men were at work, as seen in 
Figs. 200 and 201, using long handled hoes, with blades 




Fig. 201.— Hoe usea lor shallow eultiTation in developing an earth mulch. 
The blade is 13 inclies long and 9 inches wide. 

nine hy thirteen inches, hung so as to draw just under the 
surface, doing very effective work, permitting them to 
cover the ground rapidly. 

Walking further, we came upon six women in a field 
of wheat, gleaning the single heads Avhich had prematurely 
ripened and broken over upon the ground between the 
rows soon to be harvested. Whether they were doing this 
as a privilege or as a task we do not know; they were 
strong, cheerful, reasonably dressed, hardly past middle 
life and it was nearly noon, yet not one of them had col- 



^VIlcat Harvest. 



341 



lected more straws than she could readily grasp in one 
hand. The season in Chihli as in Shantung, had been one 
of unusual drought, making the crop short and perhaps un- 
usual frugality was being practiced; but it is in saving 
that these people excel perhaps more than in producing. 
These heads of wheat, if left upon the ground, would be 
w.'isted and if the women were privileged gleaners in the 
fields their returns were certainly much greater than were 




Fig. 202. — Gathering wheat, harvested t>y being pulled and tied in bundles. 
Team consists of a small donkey and a medium sized cow, which consti- 
tute the most common farm team, Tientsin, China, 



those of the verv^ old women we have seen in France gath- 
ering heads of wheat from the already harvested fields. 

In the fields between Tientsin and Peking all wheat was 
being pulled, the earth shaken from the roots, tied in 
small bundles and taken to the dwellings, sometimes on 
the heavy cart drawn by a team consisting of a small don- 
key and cow hitched tandem, as seen in Fig, 202, ilillet 
had been planted between the rows of wheat in this field 
and was already np. When the wheat was removed the 
ground would be fertilized and planted to soy beans. 
Because of the dry season this farmer estimated his yield 
would be but eight to nine bushels per acre. He was ex- 



^42 About Tientsin. 

pecting to harvest thirteen to fourteen bushels of millet 
and from ten to twelve bushels of soy beans per acre from 
the same field. This would give him an earning, based on 
the local prices, of $10.36, gold, for the wheat; $6.00 for 
the beans, and $5.48 per acre for the millet. This land 
was owned by the family of the Emperor and was rented 
at $1.55, gold, per acre. The soil was a rather light sandy 
loam, not inherently fertile, and fertilizers to the v^ue 
of $3.61 gold, per acre, had been applied, leaving the 
earning $16.71 per acre. 

Another farmer with whom we talked, pulling his crop 
of wheat, would follow this with millet and soy beans in 
alternate rows. His yield of wheat was expected to be 
eleven to twelve bushels per acre, his beans twenty-one 
bushels and his millet twenty-five bushels which, at the 
local prices for grain and straw, would bring a gross 
earning of $35, gold, per acre. 

Before reaching the end of our walk through the fields 
toward the next station we came across another of the 
many instances of the labor these people are willing to 
perform for only a small possible increase in crop. The 
field was adjacent to one of the windbreak hedges and 
the trees had spread their roots far afield and were threat- 
ening his crop through the consumption of moisture and 
plant food. To check this depletion the farmer had dug 
a trench twenty inches deep the length of his field, and 
some twenty feet from the line of trees, thereby cutting 
all of the surface roots to stop their draft on the soil. The 
trench was left open and an interesting feature observed 
was that nearly every cut root on the field side of the 
trench had thrown up one or more shoots bearing leaves, 
while the ends still connected with the trees showed no 
signs of leaf growth. 

In Chihli as elsewhere the Chinese are skilled gardeners, 
using water for irrigation whenever it is advantageous. 
One gardener was growing a crop of early cabbage, fol- 
lowed by one of melons, and these with radish the same 



Yields. 343 

season. He was paying a rent of $6.45, gold, per acre; 
was applj'ing fertilizer at a cost of nearly $8 per acre 
for each of the three crops, making his cash outlay $29.67 
per acre. His crop of cabbage sold for $103, gold; his 
melons for $77, and his radish for something more than 
$51, making a total of $232.20 per acre, leaving him a net 
value of $202.53. 

A second gardener, growing potatoes, obtained a yield, 
when sold new, of 8,000 pounds per acre; and of 16,000 
pounds when the crop was permitted to mature. The new 
potatoes were sold so as to bring $51.60 and the mature 
potatoes $185.76 per acre, making the earning for the two 
crops the same season a total of $237.36, gold. By planting 
the first crop very early these gardeners secure two crops 
the same season, as far north as Columbus, Ohio, and 
Springfield, Hlinois, the first crop being harvested when 
the tubers are about the size of walnuts. The rental and 
fertilizers in this case amounted to $30.96 per acre. 

Still another gardener growing winter wheat followed 
by onions, and these by cabbage, both transplanted, real- 
ized from the three crops a gross earning of $176.73, gold, 
per acre, and incurred an expense of $31.73 per acre for 
fertilizer and rent, leaving him a net earning of $145 
per acre. 

These old people have acquired the skill and practice 
of storing and preserving such perishable fruits as pears 
and grapes so as to enable them to keep them on the mar- 
kets almost continuously. Pears were very common in the 
latter part of June, and Consul-General Williams informed 
me that grapes are regularly carried into July. In talking 
with my interpreter as to the methods employed I could 
only learn that the growers depend simply upon dry earth 
cellars which can be maintained at a very uniform temper- 
ature, the separate fruits being wrapped in paper. No 
foreigner with whom we talked knew their methods. 

Vegetables are carried through the winter in such earth 
cellars as are seen in Fig. 88, page 161, these being covered 
after they are filled. 



344 About Tientsin. 

As to the price of labor in this part of China, we learned 
through Consul-General Williams that a master mechanic 
may receive 50 cents, Mexican, per day, and a Journeyman 
18 cents, or at a rate of 21.5 cents and 7.75 cents, gold. 
Farm laborers receive from $20 to $30, Mexican, or $8.60 
to $12.90, gold, per year, with food, fuel and presents 
which make a total of $17.20 to $21.50. This is less for 
the year than we pay for a month of probably less efficient 
labor. There is relatively little child labor in China and 
this perhaps should be expected when adult labor is so 
abundant and so cheap. 



XVI. 
MANCHURIA AND KOREA. 



The 39th parallel of latitude lies just south of Tientsin ; 
followed westward, it crosses the toe of Italy's boot, leads 
past Lisbon in Portugal, near Washington and St. Louis 
and to the north of Sacramento on the Pacific. We were 
leaving a eountrj^ with a mean July temperature of SO'^ ¥ , 
and of 21^' in January, but where two feet of ice may form; 
a country where the eighteen year mean maximum tem- 
perature is 103.5° and the mean minimum 4.5° ; where 
twice in this period the thermometer recorded 113° above 
zero, and twice 7° below, and yet near the coast and in 
the latitude of Washington ; a country where the mean 
annual rainfall is 19.72 inches and all but 3.37 inches falls 
in June, July, August and September. We had taken 
the 5 :40 A. 'M. Imperial North-China train, June 17th, 
to go as far northward as Chicago, — to Mukden in Man- 
churia, a distance by rail of some four hundred miles, but 
all of the way still across the northward extension of the 
great Chinese coastal plain. Southward, out from the 
coldest quarter of the globe, where the mean January 
temperature is more than 40° below zero, sweep northerly 
winds, which bring to Mukden a mean January tempera- 
ture only 3° above zero, and yet there the July tempera- 
ture averages as high as 77° and there is a mean annual 
rainfall of but 18.5 inches, coming mostly in the summer, 
as at Tientsin. 

Although the rainfall of the northern extension of 
China's coastal plain is small, its efficiency is relatively 



346 Manchuria and Korea. 

high because of its most favorable distribution and the 
high summer temperatures. In the period of early growth, 
April, May and June, there are 4.18 inches; but in the 
period of maximum growth, July and August, the rainfall 
is 11.4 inches; and in the ripening period, September and 
October, it is 3.08 inches, while during the rest of the 
year but 1.06 inch falls. Thus most of the rain comes 
at the time when the crops require the greatest daily 
consumption and it is least in mid-winter, during the 
period of little growth. 

As our train left Tientsin we traveled for a long dis- 
tance through a country agriculturally poor and little 
tilled, with surface fiat, the soil apparently saline, and 
the land greatly in need of drainage. Wherever there 
were canals the crops were best, apparently occupying 
more or less continuous areas along either bank. The day 
was hot and sultry but laborers were busy with their large 
hoes, often with all garments laid aside except a short 
shirt or a pair of roomy trousers. 

In the salt district about the village of Tangku there 
were huge stacks of salt and smaller piles not yet brought 
together, with numerous windmills, constituting most 
striking features in the landscape, but there was almost 
no agricultural or other vegetation. Beyond Pehtang there 
are other salt works and a canal leads westward to Tient- 
sin, on which the salt is probably taken thither, and still 
other salt stacks and windmills continued visible until near 
Hanku, where another canal leads toward Peking. Here 
the coast recedes eastward from the railway and beyond 
the city limits many grave mounds dot the surrounding 
plains where herds of sheep were grazing. 

As we hurried toward the delta region of the Lwan ho, 
and before reaching Tangshan, a more productive country 
was traversed. Thrifty trees made the landscape green, 
and fields of millet, kaoliang and wheat stretched for miles 
together along the track and back over the flat plain 
beyond the limit of vision. Then came fields planted with 



Careful Farming. 347 

two rows of maize alternating with one row of soy beans, 
but not over twenty -eight inches apart, one stalk of corn 
in a place every sixteen to eighteen inches, all carefully 
hoed, weedless and blanketed with an excellent earth 
mulch; but still the leaves were curling in the intense 
heat of the sun. Tangshan is a large city, apparently of 
recent growth on the railroad in a countrj' where isolated 
conical hills rise one hundred or two hundred feet out of 
the flat plains. Cart loads of finely pulverized earth com- 
post were here moving to the fields in large numbers, being 
laid in single piles of five hundred to eight hundred 
pounds, forty to sixty feet apart. At Kaiping the coun- 
try grows a little rolling an-d we passed through the first 
railway cuts, six to eight feet deep, and the water in the 
streams is running ten to twelve feet below the surface 
of the fields. On the right and beyond Kuyeh there are 
low hills, and here we passed enormous qiaantities of dry, 
finely powdered earth compost, distributed on narrow un- 
planted area over the fields. What crop, if indeed any, 
had occupied these areas this season, we could not judge. 
The fertilization here is even more extensive and more 
general than we found it in the Shantung province, and 
in places water was being carried in pails to the fields 
for use either in planting or in transplanting, to ensure i 
the readiness of the new crops to utilize the first rainfall j 
when it comes. 

Then the bed of a nearly dry stream some three hundred 
feet wide was crossed and beyond it a sandy plain was 
planted in long narrow fields between windbreak hedges. 
The crops were small but evidently improved by the influ- 
ence of the shelter. The sand in places had drifted into 
the hedges to a hight of three feet. At a number of other 
places along the way before Mukden was reached such 
protected areas w^ere passed and oftenest on the north side 
of wide, now nearly dry, stream channels. 

As we passed on toward Shanhaikwan we were carried 
over broad plains even more nearly level and unobstructed 



348 



Manchuria and Korea. 



than any to be found in the corn belt of the middle west, 
and these too planted with com, kaoliang, wheat and 
beans, and with the low houses hidden in distant scattered 
clusters of trees dotting the wide plain on either side, 
with not a fence, and nothing to suggest a road anywhere 
in sight. We seemed to be moving through one vast field 
dotted with hundreds of busy men, a plowman here, and 
there a great cart hopelessly lost in the field so far as- 
one could see any sign of road to guide their course. 




Fig. 203. — Exportation of soy beans from Manchuria. Lwanctiow, Chitili. 



Some early crop appeared to have been harvested from 
areas alternating with those on the ground, and these 
were dotted with piles of the soil and manure compost, 
aggregating hundreds of tons, distributed over the fields 
but no doubt during the next three or four days these 
thousands of piles would have been worked into the soil 
and vanished from sight, to reappear after another crop 
and another year. 

It was at Lwanchow that we met the out-going tide of 
soy beans destined for Japan and Europe, pouring in 
from the surrounding country in gunny sacks brought on 
heavy carts drawn by large mules, as seen in Fig. 203, 
and enormous quantities had been stacked in the open 



The Great Wall. 849 

along the tracks, with no shelter whatever, awaiting the 
arrival of trains to move them to export harbors. 

The planting liere, as elsewhere, is in rows, but not of 
one kind of grain. Most frequently two rows of maize, 
kaoliang or millet alternated with the soy beans and 
usually not more than twenty-eight inches apart, sharp high 
ridge cultivation being the general practice. Such plant- 
ing secures the requisite sunshine with a larger number of 
plants on the field; it secures a continuous general distri- 
bution of the roots of the nitrogen-fixing soy beans in the 
soil of all the field every season, and permits the soil to 
be more continuously and more completely laid under trib- 
ute by the root systems. In places where the stand of 
corn or millet was too open the gaps v.'ere filled with the 
soy beans. Such a system of planting possibly pennits a 
more immediate utilization of the nitrogen gathered from 
the soil air in the root nodules, as these die and undergo 
nitrification during the same season, while the crops are 
yet on the ground, and so far as phosphorus and potassium 
compounds are liberated by this decay, they too would 
become available to the crops. 

The end of the day's journey was at Shanhaikwan on 
the boundary between "Chihli and Manchuria, the train 
stopping at 6:20 P. il. for the night. Stepping upon 
the veranda from our room on the second floor of a Japan- 
ese inn in the early morning, there stood before us, sullen 
and grey, the eastern terminus of the Great "Wall, winding 
fifteen hundred miles westward across twenty degrees of 
longitude, having endured through twenty-one centuries, 
the most stupendous piece of construction ever conceived by 
man and execxited by a nation. More than twenty feet 
thick at the base and than twelve feet on the top; rising 
fifteen to thirtj' feet above the ground with parapets along 
both faces and towers every two hundred yards rising 
twenty feet higher, it must have been, for its time and 
the methods of warfare then practiced, when defended by 
their thousands, the boldest and most efficient national 



350 Mmichuria and Korea. 

defense ever constructed. Nor in the economy of construc- 
tion and maintenance has it ever been equalled. 

Even if it be true that 20,000 masons toiled through ten 
years in its building, defended by 400,000 soldiers, fed by 
a commissariat of 20,000 more and supported by 30,000 
others in the transport, quarry and potters' service, she 
would then have been using less than eight tenths per cent 
of her population, on a basis of 60,000,000 at the time; 
while according to Bdmond Thery's estimate, the ofiQcers 
and soldiers of Europe today, in time of peace, constitute 
one per cent of a population of 400,000,000 of people, and 
these, at only one dollar each per day for food, clothing 
and loss of producing power would cost her nations, in 
ten years, more than $14,000 million. China, with her 
present habits and customs, would more easily have main- 
tained her army of 470,000 men on thirty cents each per 
day, or for a total ten-year cost of but $520,000,000. The 
French cabinet in 1900 approved a naval program involv- 
ing an expenditure of $600,000,000 during the next ten 
years, a tax of more than $15 for every man, woman and 
child in the Republic. 

Leaving Shanhaikwan at 5 :20 in the morning and reach- 
ing Mukden at 6-30 in the evening, we rode the entire 
day through Manehurian fields. Manchuria has an area 
of 363,700 square miles, equal to that of both Dakotas, 
Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa combined. It has roughly 
the outline of a huge boot and could one slide it eastward 
until Port Arthur was at Washington, Shanhaikwan would 
fall well toward Pittsburg, both at the tip of the broad 
toe to the boot. The foot would lie across Pennsylvania, 
New York, New Jersey and all of New England, extending 
beyond New Brunswick with the heel in the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence. Harbin, at the instep of the boot, would lie 
fifty miles east of Montreal and the expanding leg would 
reach northwestward nearly to James Bay, entirely to the 
north of the Ottawa river and the Canadian Pacific, span- 
ning a thousand miles of latitude and nine hundred miles 
of longitude. 



I'lains and Forests. 351 

The Liao plain, thirty miles wide, and the central Sun- 
gari plain, are the largest in Manchuria, forming together 
a long narrow valley floor between two parallel mountain 
systems and extending northeasterly from the Liao gulf, 
between Port Arthur and Shanhaikwan, up the Liao river 
and down the Sungari to the Amur, a distance of eight 
hundred or more miles. These plains have a fertile, deep 
soil and it is on them and other lesser river bottoms that 
Manchurian agriculture is developed, supporting eight or 
nine million people on a cultivated acreage possibly not 
greater than 25,000 square miles. 

ilanehuria has great forest and grazing possibilities 
awaiting future development, as well as much mineral 
wealth. The population of Tsitsihar, in the latitude of 
middle North Dakota, swells from thirty thousand to 
seventy thousand during September and October, when 
the ^Mongols bring in their cattle to market. In the middle 
province, at the head of steam navigation on the Sungari, 
because of the abundance and cheapness of lumber, Kirin 
has become a ship-building center for Chinese junks. The 
Sungari — Milky — river, is a large stream carrying more 
water at flood season than the Amur above its mouth, 
the latter being navigable 450 miles for steamers drawing 
twelve feet of water, and 1500 miles for those drawing 
four feet, so that during the summer season the middle 
and northern provinces have natural inland waterways, 
but the outlet to the sea is far to the north and closed 
by ice six months of the year. 

Not far beyond the Great "Wall of China, fast falling 
into ruin, partly through the appropriation of its material 
for building purposes now that it has outlived its useful- 
ness, another broad, nearly dry stream bed was crossed. 
There, in full bloom, was what appeared to be the wild 
white rose seen earlier, further south, west of Suchow, 
having a remarkable profusion of small white bloom in 
clusters resembling the Rambler rose. One of these bushes 
growing wild there on the bank of the canal had over- 



352 



Manchuria and Korea. 



spread a clump of trees one of which was thirty feet in 
hight, enveloping it in a mantle of bloom, as seen in the 
upper section of Fig. 204. The lower section of the illus- 




rig. 204.— Wild white rose in bloom west ol Siichow, June 2d, and in southern 
Manchuria, June 18th. Lower section, close view of same, showing clusters. 



tration is a closer view showing the clusters. The stem 
of this rose, three feet above the ground, measured 14.5 
inches in circumference. If it would thrive in this coun- 
try nothing could be better for parks and pleasure drives. 



Field Scenes. 353 

Later on our journej' we saw it many times in bloom along 
the railwaj' between Mukden and Antung, but nowhere 
attaining so large growth. The blossoms are scant three- 
fourths inch in diameter, usuallj- in compact clusters of 
three to eleven, sometimes in twos and occasionally stand- 
ing singly. The leaves are five-foliate, sometimes trifoliate ; 
leaflets broadly lanceolate, accuminate and finely serrate ; 
thorns minute, recurrent and few, only on the smaller 
branches. 

In a field beyond, a small donkey was drawing a stone 
roller three feet long and one foot in diameter, firming 
the crests of narrow, sharp, recently formed ridges, two 
at a time. Millet, maize and kaoliang were here the chief 
crops. Another nearly dry stream was crossed, where 
the fields became more rolling and much cut by deep 
gulleys, the first instances we had seen in China except 
on the steep hillsides about Tsingtao. Not all of the lands 
here were cultivated, and on the untilled areas herds of 
fifty to a hundred goats, pigs, cattle, horses and donkeys 
were grazing. 

Fields in Manchuria are larger than in China and some 
rows were a full quarter of a mile long, so that cultivation 
was being done with donkeys and cattle, and large num- 
bers of men were working in gangs of four, seven, ten, 
twenty, and in one field as high as fifty, hoeing millet. 
Such a crew as the largest mentioned could probably be 
hired at ten cents each, gold, per day, and were probably 
men from the thickly settled portions of Shantung who 
had left in the spring, expecting to return in September 
or October. Both laborers and working animals were 
taking dinner in the fields, and earlier in the da.y we had 
seen several instances where hay and feed were being taken 
to the field on a wooden sled, with the plow and other tools. 
At noon this was serving as manger for the cattle, mules 
or donkeys. 

In fields where the close, deep furrowing and ridging 
WPS beinsr done the team often consisted of a heavy ox 
23 



354 Mancliuria and Korea. 

and two small donkeys driven abreast, the three walking 
in adjacent rows, the plow following the ox, or a heavy 
mule instead. 

The rainy season had not begun and in many fields there 
was planting and transplanting where water was used 
in separate hills, sometimes brought in pails from a near- 
by stream, and in other cases on carts provided with tanks. 
Holes were made along the crests of the ridges with the 
blade of a narrow hoe and a little water poured in each 
hill, from a dipper, before planting or setting. These must 
have been other instances where the farmers were willing 
to incur additional labor to save time for the maturing of 
the crop by assisting germination in a soil too dry to make 
it certain until the rains came. 

It appears probable that the strong ridging and the 
close level rows so largely adopted here must have marked 
advantages in utilizing the rainfall, especially the portions 
coming early, and that later also if it should come in heavy 
showers. With steep narrow ridging, heavy rains would 
be shed at once to the bottom of the deep furrows without 
over-saturating the ridges, while the wet soil in the bot- 
tom of the furrows would favor deep percolation with 
lateral capillarv flow taking place strongly under the 
ridges from the furrows, carrying both moisture and solu- 
ble plant food where they will be most completely and 
quickly available. When the rain comes in heavy showers 
each furrow may serve as a long reservoir which will 
prevent washing and at the same time permit quick pene- 
tration ; the ridges never becoming flooded or puddled, 
permit the soil air to escape readily as the water from the 
furrows sinks, as it cannot readily do in flat fields when 
the rains fall rapidly and fill all of the soil pores, thus 
closing them to the escape of air from below, which must 
take place before the water can enter. 

Wlien rows are only twenty-four to twenty-eight inches 
apart, ridging is not sufficiently more wasteful of soil 
moisture, through greater evaporation because of increased 
surface, to compensate for the other advantages gained. 



Fertilization. 355 

and hence their practice, for their conditions, appears 
sound. 

The application of finely pulverized earth compost to 
fields to be planted, and in some cases where the fields 
were already planted, continued general after leaving 
Shanhailkwan as it had been before. Compost stacks were 
common in j-ards \yherever buildings were close enough 
to the track to be seen. Much of the way about one-third 
of the fields were yet to be, or had just been, planted and 
in a great majoritj' of these compost fertilizer had been 
laid down for use on them, or was being taken to them in 
large heavy carts drawn sometimes by three mules. Be- 
tween Sarhougon and Ningj'uenchow fourteen fields thus 
fertilized were counted in less than half a mile ; ten others 
in the next mile ; eleven in the mile and a quarter follow- 
ing. In the next two miles one hundred fields were counted 
and .just before reaching the station we counted during 
five minutes, with watch in hand, ninety-five fields to be 
planted, upon which this fertilizer had been brought. In 
some cases the compost was being spread in furrows be- 
tween the rows of a last year's crop, evidently to be turned 
under, thus reversing the position of the ridges. 

After passing Lienshan, where the railway runs near 
the sea. a sail was visible on the bay and many stacks of 
salt piled about the evaporation fields were associated with 
the revolving sail windmills already described. Here, too, 
large numbers of cattle, horses, mules and donkeys were 
grazing on the untilled low lands, beyond which we trav- 
ersed a section where all fields were planted, where no 
fertilizer was piled in the field but where many groups of 
men were busy hoeing, sometimes twenty in a gang. 

Chinese soldiers with bayonetted guns stood guard at 
every railway station between Shanhaitsvan and Mukden. 
and from Chinehowfu our coach was occupied by some 
Chinese official with guests and military attendants, includ- 
ing armed soldiers. The official and his guests were an 
attractive group of men with pleasant faces and winning 
manners, clad in many garments of richly figured silk of 



•J56 Manchuria and Korea. 

bright, attractive, but unobtrusive, colors, who talked, seri- 
ously or in mirth, almost incessantly. They took the train 
about one o'clock and lunch vs^as immediately served in 
Chinese style, but the last course was not brought until 
nearly four o'clock. At every station soldiers stood in 
line in the attitude of salute until the official car had 
passed. 

Just before reaching Chinchowfu we saw the first planted 
fields littered with stubble of the previous crop, and in 
many instances such stubble was being gathered and 
removed to the villages, large stacks having been piled in 
the yards to be used either as fuel or in the production of 
compost. As the train approached Taling ho groups of 
men were hoeing in millet fields, thirty in one group on 
one side and fifty in another body on the other. Many 
small herds of cattle, horses, donkeys and flocks of goats 
and sheep were feeding along stream courses and on the 
unplanted fields. Beyond the station, after crossing the 
river, still another sand dune tract was passed, planted 
with willows, millet occupying the level areas between the 
dunes, and not far beyond, wide unfilled flats were crossed, 
on which many herds were grazing and dotted with grave 
mounds as we neared Koupantze, where a branch of the 
railway traverses the Liao plain to the port of Newchang. 
It was in this region that there came the first suggestion 
of resemblance to our marshland meadows ; and very soon 
there were seen approaching from the distance loads so 
green that except for the large size one would have judged 
them to be fresh grass. They were loads of cured hay 
in the brightest green, the result, no doubt, of curing under 
their dry weather conditions. 

At Ta Hu Shan large quantities of grain in sacks were 
piled along the tracks and in the freight yards, but under 
matting shelters. Near here, too, large three-mule loads 
of dry earth compost were going to the fields and men 
were busy pulverizing and mixing it on the threshing 
floors preparatory for use. Nearly all crops growing were 
one or another of the millets, but considerable areas were 



Export of Soy Beans. 357 

yet unplanted and on these cattle, horses, mules and don- 
kej'S were feeding and eight more loads of verj' bright 
new made hay crossed the track. 

When the train reached Sinminfu where the railway 
turns abruptly eastward to cross the Liao ho to reach 
ilukden we saw the first extensive massing of the huge bean 
cakes for export, together •nith enormous quantities of soy 
beans in sacks piled along the railway and in the freight 
yards or loaded on cars made up in trains ready to move. 
Leaving this station we passed among fields of grain look- 
ing decidedly yellow, the first indication we had seen in 
China of crops nitrogen-hungry and of soils markedly defi- 
cient in available nitrogen. Beyond the next station the 
fields were decidedly spotted and uneven as well as yellow, 
recalling conditions so commonly seen at home and which 
had been conspicuously absent here before. Crossing the 
Liao ho with its broad channel of shifting sands, the river 
carrying the largest volume of water we had yet seen, 
but the stream very low and still characteristic of the close 
of the dry season of semi-arid climates, we soon reached 
another station where the freight yards and all of the 
space along the tracks were piled high with bean cakes 
and yet the fields about were reflecting the impoverished 
condition of the soil through the yellow crops and their 
uneven growth on the fields. 

Since the Japanese-Russian war the shipments of soy 
beans and of bean cake from Manchuria have increased 
enormously. Up to this time there had been exports to 
the southern provinces of China where the bean cakes were 
used as fertilizers for the rice fields, but the new exten- 
sive markets have so raised the price that in several in- 
stances we were informed they could not then afford to 
use bean cake as fertilizer. From Newchwang alone, in 
1905, between Januarv^ 1st and Mari.'h 31st, there went 
abroad 2,286.000 pounds of beans and bean cake, but in 
1906 the amount had increased to 4.883,000 pounds. But a 
report published in the Tientsin papers as official, while 
we were there, stated that the value of the export of 



358 Manchuri-a and Korea. 

bean cake and soy beans for the months ending March 
31st had been, in 1909, only $1,635,000, gold, compared 
with $3,065,000 in the corresponding period of 1908, and 
of $5,120,000 in 1907, showing a marked decrease. 

Edward C. Parker, writing from Mukden for the Review 
of Reviews, stated : ' ' The bean cake shipments from 
Newchwang, Dalny and Antung in 1908 amounted to 
515,198 tons; beans, 239,298 tons; bean oil, 1930 tons; 
having a total value of $15,016,649 (U. S. gold)". 

According to the composition of soy beans as indicated 
in Hopkins' table of analyses, these shipments of beans 
and bean cake would remove an aggregate of 6171 tons 
of phosphorus, 10,097 tons of potassium, and 47,812 tons 
of nitrogen from Manchurian soils as the result of export 
for that year. Could such a rate have been maintained 
during two thousand years there would have been sold 
from these soils 20,194,000 tons of potassium; 12,342,000 
tons of phosphorus and 95,624,000 tons of nitrogen; and 
the phosphorus, were it thus exported, would have ex- 
ceeded more than threefold all thus far produced in the 
United States; it would have exceeded the world's output 
in 1906 more than eighteen times, even assuming that all 
phosphate rock mined was seventy-tive per cent pure. 

The choice of the millets and the sorghums as the staple 
bread crops of northern China and Manchuria has been 
quite as remarkable as the selection of rice for the more 
southern latitudes, and the two togetner have played a 
most important part in determining the high maintenance 
efficiency of these people. In nutritive value these grains 
rank well with wheat; the stems of the larger varieties 
are extensively used for both fuel and building material 
and -the smaller forms make excellent forage and have 
been used directly for maintaining the organic content of 
the soil. Their rapid development and their high endur- 
ance of drought adapt them admirably to the climate of 
north China and Manchuria where the rains begin only 
after late June and where weather too cold for growth 
comes earlier in the fall. The quick maturity of these crops 



The Millets. 359 

also permits them to be used to great advantage even 
throughout the south, in their systems of mutiple cropping 
so generally adopted, while their great resistance to 
drought, being able to remain at a standstill for a long time 
when the soil is too dry for growth and yet be able to push 
ahead rapidly when favorable rains come, permits them 
to be used on the higher lands generally where water is 
not available for irrigation. 

In the Shantung pro'^ince the large millet, sorghum or 
kaoliang, yields as high as 2000 to 3000 pounds of seed 
per acre, and 5600 to 6000 pounds of air-dry stems, equal 
in weight to 1.6 to 1.7 cords of drj^ oak wood. In the 
region of Mukden, Manchuria, its average yield of seed 
is placed at thirty-five bushels of sixty pounds weight per 
acre, and with this comes one and a half tons of fuel or 
of building material. Hosie states that the kaoliang is 
the staple food of the population of Manchuria and the 
principal grain food of the work animals. The grain is 
first washed in cold water and then poured into a kettle 
with four times its volume of boiling water and cooked 
for an hour, without salt, as with rice. It is eaten with 
chopsticks with boiled or salted vegetables. He states that 
an ordinary' servant requires about two pounds of this 
grain per day, and that a workman at heavy labor will 
take double the amount. A Chinese friend of his, keeping 
five servants, supplied them with 240 pounds of millet 
per month, together with 16 pounds of native flour, 
regarded as sufficient for two days, and meat for two 
days, the amount not being stated. Two of the small mil- 
lets (Set aria Italica and Panicum milliaceum) , wheat,, 
maize and buckwheat are other grains which are used as 
food but chiefly to give variety and change of diet. 

A^erv large quantities of matting and wrappings are also 
made from the leaves of the large millet, which serve many 
purposes corresponding with the rice mattings and bags 
of Japan and southern China. 

The small millets, in Shantung, yield as high as 2700 
pounds of seed and 4800 pounds of straw per acre. In 



360 



Manchuria and Korea. 



Japan, in the year 1906, there were grown 737,719 acres 
of foxtail, barnyard and proso millet, yielding 17,084,000 
bushels of seed or an average of twenty-three bushels per 
acre. In addition to the millets, Japan grew, the same 
year, 5,964,300 bushels of buckwheat on 394,523 acres, or 
an average of fifteen bushels per acre. The next engrav- 
ing. Fig. 205, shows a crop of millet already six inches 







Pig. 205.— Field ol millet planted between rows of Windsor beans. Chiba, 

Japan. 

high planted between rows of Windsor beans which had 
matured about the middle of June. The leaves had 
dropped, the beans had been picked from the stems, and 
a little later, when the roots had had time to decay the 
bean stems would be pulled and tied in bundles for use 
as fuel or for fertilizer. 

We had reached Mukden thoroughly tired after a long 
day of continuous close observation and writing. The 
Astor House, where we were to stop, was three miles from 
the station and the only conve.yance to meet the train 



Mul-dcn. 



361 



was a four-seated springless, open, semi-baggage carryall 
and it was a full hour lurahering its way to our hotel. But 



■ 


B^^v'- "' ^ ' 


IH^^I 


1 






©^H 


^Hh^B^^^^^^f '^ 


^fl 


1 


[mmmj^^s 


"^^^ffiPi^^P^P^^wH 


BB 


^^^^ 


1 


ipim 




Wk 


gip^jPif 


pui^^^mii 


I 


Pgm 


B|^^^3h 


1 


Sj^^r^^ ^ - ^\^t '^9H 


11^ 



rig. 206. — A Manchu lady and servant. (After Hosie.) 

here as everywhere in the Orient the foreigner meets scenes 
and phases of life competent to divert his attention from 
almost any discomfort. Nothing could be more striking 
"than the peculiar mode the ilanchu ladies have of dress- 



362 Manchuria and Korea. 

ing their hair, seen in Fig. 206, many instances of which 
were passed on the streets during this early evening ride. 
It was fearfully and wonderfully done, laid in the smooth- 
est, glossiest black, with nearly the lateral spread of the 
tail of a turkey cock and much of the backward curve of 
that of the rooster; far less attractive than the plainer, 
refined, modest, yet highly artistic style adopted by either 
Chinese or Japanese ladies. 

The journey from Mukden to Antung required two 
days, the train stopping for the night at Tsaohokow. Our 
route lay most of the way through mountainous or steep 
hilly country and our train was made up of diminutive 
coaches drawn by a tinj^ engine over a three-foot two-inch 
narrow^ guage track of light rails laid by the Japanese 
during the war with Russia, for the purpose of moving 
their armies and supplies to the hotly contested fields in 
the Liao and Sungari plains. Many of the grades were 
steep, the curves sharp, and in several places it was nec- 
essary to divide the short train to enable the engines to 
negotiate them. 

To the southward over the Liao plain the crops were 
almost exclusively millet and soy beans, with a little bar- 
ley, wheat, and a few oats. Between Mukden and the 
first station across the Hun river we had passed twenty- 
four good sized fields of soy beans on one side of the river 
and twenty-two on the other, and before reaching the hilly 
country, after travelling a distance of possibly fifteen 
miles, we had passed 309 other and similar fields close 
along the track. In this distance also we had passed two 
of the monuments erected by the Japanese, marking sites 
of their memorable battles. These fields were everywhere 
flat, lying from sixteen to twenty feet above the beds ,pf 
the nearly dry streams, and the cultivation was mostly, 
being done with horses or cattle. 

After leaving the plains country the railway traversed 
a narrow winding valley less than a mile wide7~*witli_gEad^ 
ient so steep that our train was divided. Fully sixty per 
cent of the hill slopes were cultivated nearly to the summit 



Products of the Hills. 363 

and 3'et rising apparently more than one in tiiree to five 
feet, and tlie uncultivated slopes were elosely wooded with 
young trees, few more than twenty to thirty feet high, but 
in blocks evidently of different ages. Beyond the pass 
much of the "cultivated slopes have walled terraces. 
We crossed a large stream where railway ties were being 
rafted down the river. Just bej^ond this river the train 
was again divided to ascend a gradient of one in thirty, 
reaching the summit by five times switching back, and 
matched on the other side of the pass by a down grade 
of one in forty. 

At many of the farm houses in the narrow valleys along 
the waj' large rectangular, flat topped compost piles were 
passed, thirty to forty inches high and twenty, thirty, forty 
and even in one case as much as sixt}' feet square on the 
ground, ilore and more it became evident that these 
mountain and hill lands were originally heavily wooded 
and that the new growth springs up quickly, developing 
rapidly. It was clear also that the custom of cutting over 
these wooded areas at frequent intervals is verj' old, not 
always in the same stage of growth but usually when the 
trees are quite small. Considerable quantities of cordwood 
were piled at the stations along the railway and were being 
loaded on the cars. This was always either round wood or 
sticks split but once ; and much charcoal, made mostlj^ from 
round wood or sticks split but once, was being shipped in 
sacks shaped like those used for rice, seen in Fig. 180. 
Some strips of the forest growth had been allowed to stand 
imdisturbed apparently for twenty or more years, but 
most areas have been cut at more frequent intervals, often 
apparentl.v once in three to five, or perhaps ten, years. 

At several places on the rapid streams crossed, proto- 
types of the modem turbine water-wheel were installed, 
doing duty grinding beans or grain. As with native ma- 
chinery everywhere in China, these wheels were reduced to 
the lowest terms and the principle put to work almost 
unclothed. These turbines were of the downward discharge 
tj'pe, much resembling our modem windmills, ten to six- 



364 



Manchuria and Korea. 



teen feet in diameter, set horizontally on a vertical axis 
rising througli the floor of the mill, with the vanes sur- 
rounded by a rim, the water dropping through the wheel, 
reacting when reflected from the obliquely set vanes. 
American engineers and mechanics would pronounce these 
verj^ crude, primitive and iuefBcient. A truer view would 
regard them as examples of a masterful grasp of principle 



^^^T"^^-, Ti-'^^'^t'T^^^- -"^'i-r-JT'^T-^-^ 




rig. 207. — Gathering of Koreans in holiday attire, on their national "Swing 

day." 



by some man who long ago saw the unused energy of 
the stream and succeeded thus in turning it to account. 

Both days of our journey had been bright and very 
warm and, although we took the train early in the morn- 
ing at Mukden, a young Japanese anticipated the heat, 
entering the train clad only in his kimono and sandals, 
carrying a suitcase and another bundle. He rode all day, 
the most comfortably, if immodestly, clad man on the 
train, and the next morning took his seat in front of us 
<;lad in fhe same garb, but before the train reached Antung 
he took down his suitcase and then and there, deliberately 



Siring Day. 



365 



attired himself in a good foreign suit, folding his kimono 
and packing it away with his sandals. 

From Antung wp crossed the Yalu on the ferry to New 
Wiju at 6:30 A. M., June 22, and were then in quite a 
different country and among a very different people, al- 
though all of the railway officials, employes, police and 
guards were Japanese, as they had heen from ilukden. 
At Antung and New Wiju the Yalu is a very broad slow 




Fig. 208.— Group of Koreans at Gyoha, being addressed by a public speaker 
on Swing day. 



stream resembling an arm of the sea more than a river, 
reminding one of the St. Johns at Jacksonville, Florida. 
June 22nd proved to be one of the national festival 
days in Korea, called "Swing day", and throughout our 
entire ride to Seoul the fields were nearly all deserted and 
throngs of people, arrayed in gala dress, appeared all 
along the line of the railway, sometimes congregating in 
bodies of two to three thousand or more, as seen in Fig. 
207. IMany swings had been hung and were being enjoyed 
by the young people. Boys and men were bathing in all 



366 



Manchnriu and Korea. 



sorts of "swimmiBg holes" and places. So too, there 
were many large open air gatherings being addressed by 
public speakers, one of which is seen in Fig. 208. 

Nearly everyone was dressed in white outer garments 
made from some fabric which although not mosquito net- 
ting was nearly as open and possessed of a remarkable 
stiffness which seemed to take and retain every dent with 




Pjg. 209.— Group of five Korean women in their stiff white clothing. 

astonishing effect and which was sufficiently transparent 
to reveal a third undergarment. The full out-standing 
skirts of five Korean women may be seen in Fig. 209, and 
the trousers which went with these were proportionately 
full but tied close about the ankles. The garments seemed 
to be possessed of a powerful repulsion which held them 
quite apart and away from the person, no doubt contribut- 
ing much to comfort. It was windy but one of those hot 
sultry, sticky days, and it made one feel cool to see these 
open garments surging in the wind. 



Korean Dri 



367 



The Korean men, like the Chinese, wear the hair long 
but not braided in a queue. No part of the head is shaved 
but the hair is wound in a tight coil on the top of the 
head, secured by a pin which, in the case of the Korean 
who rode in our coach from Mukden to Antung, was a 
modern, substantial ten-penny wire nail. The tall, narrow, 
conical crowns of the open hats, woven from thin bamboo 



'■.-.. ^^^ff 








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- "*'-,-■■':■ '':-:;i^;i?v.--"" 




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- ; ■, .. -:?-;?«^s* 



Fig. 210. — Group of Korean farm houses with thatched roofs and oarthern 
walls, standing at the foot of wooded hiUs. 



splints, are evidently designed to accommodate this style 
of hair dressing as well as to be cool. 

Here, too, as in China and Manchuria, nearly all crops 
are planted in rows, including the cereals, such as wheat, 
rv'c, barley and oats. We traversed first a flat marshy 
country with sandy soil and water not more than four feet 
below the surface where, on the lowest areas a close ally of 
our wild flower-de-luce was in bloom. Wheat was coming 
into head but corn Fnd millet were smaller than in ^lan- 
churia. We had left New Wiju at 7 :.'^0 in the morning and 



368 Manchuria and Korea. 

at 8 -.15 we passed from the low land into a hill country with 
narrow valleys. Scattering young pine, seldom more than 
ten to twenty-five feet high, occupied the slopes and as 
we came nearer the hills were seen to be clothed with many 
small oak, the sprouts clearly not more than one or two 
years old. Roofs of dwellings in the country were usually 
thatched with straw laid after the manner of shingles, as 
may be seen in Fig. 210, where the hills beyond show the 
low tree growth referred to, but here unusually dense. 
Bundles of pine boughs, stacked and sheltered from the 
weather, were common along the way and evidently used 
fc|r fuel. 

At 8 :25 we passed through the first tunnel and there 
were many along the route, the longest requiring thirty 
seiconds for the passing of the train. The valley beyond 
was occupied bj^ fields of wheat where beans were planted 
between the rows. Thus far none of the fields had been 
as thoroughly tilled and well cared for as those seen in 
China, nor were the crops as good. Further along we 
passed hills where the pines were all of two ages, one set 
about thirty feet high and the others twelve to fifteen feet 
or less, and among these were numerous oak sprouts. Quite 
PQSsibly these are used as food for the wild silkworms. 
In some places appearances indicate that the oak and other 
deciduous growth, with the grass, may be cut annually 
and only the pines allowed to stand for longer periods. 
As we proceeded southward and had passed Kosui the 
young oak sprouts were seen to cover the hills, often 
stretching over the slopes much like a regular crop, stand- 
ing at a hight of two to four feet, and fresh bundles of 
these sprouts were seen at houses along the foot of the 
slopes, again suggesting that the leaves may be for the 
tussur silkworms although the time appears late for the 
first moulting. After we had left Seoul, entering the 
broader vallevs where rice was more extensively grown, 
the using of the oak bouerhs and green grass brought down 
from the hill lands for green manure became very 
extensive. 



Korean Rice Culture. 



369 



After tlie winter and early spring crops have been har- 
vested tlie narrow ridges on whieli they are grown are 
turned into the furrows by means of their simple plow 
drawn bj' a heavy bullock, different from the cattle in China 
but closely similar to those in Japan. The fields are then 
flooded until they have the appearance seen in Fig. 12. 
Over these flooded ridges the green grass and oak boughs 
are spread, when the fields are again plowed and the 
material worked into the wet soil. If this working is not 




Fig. 211. — General view across valley, showing Korean rice fields being trans- 
planted, and in the foreground fertilized with green herbage from the hill 
lands. 



completely successful men enter the fields and tramp the 
surface until every twig and blade is submerged. The 
middle section in this illustration has been fitted and trans- 
planted ; in front of it and on the left are two other fields 
once plowed but not fertilized ; those far to the right have 
had the green manure applied and the ground plowed a 
second time but not finished, and in the immediate fore- 
ground the grass and boughs have been scattered but the 
second plowing is not yet done. 

We passed men and bullocks coming from the hill lands 
loaded with this green herbage and as we proceeded to- 
24 



3''0 Manchuria and Korea. 

wards Fusan more and more of the hill area was being 
made to contribute materials for green manure for the cul- 
tivated fields. The foreground of Fig. 211 had been thus 
treated and so had the field in Fig. 212, where the man was 
engaged in tramping the dressing beneath the surface. In 
very many cases this material was laid along the margin of 
the paddies ; in other cases it had been taken upon the fields 
as soon as the grain was cut and was lying in piles among 
the bundles; while in still other cases the material for 



m 






g:^v:&pm^y:. 


^3 



Fig. 212. — Rice paddy covered with oak leaves and grass brought down from 
the hills, one halj of which has been tramped beneath the surface by the 
laborer at work. 

green manure had been carried between the rows while the 
grain was still standing, but nearly ready to harvest. In 
some fields a full third of a bushel of the green stuff had 
been laid down at intervals of three feet over the whole area. 
In other cases piles of ashes alternated with those of herb- 
age, and again manure and ashes mixed had been distrib- 
uted in alternate piles with the green manure. 

In still other cases we saw untreated straw distributed 
through, the fields awaiting application. At Shindo this 
straw had the appearance of having been dipped in or 
smeared with some mixture, apparently of mud and ashes 
or possibly of some compost which had been worked into 
a thin paste with water. 



Korean Rice Culture. 



371 



After passing Keizan, mountain herbage had been 
brought down from tlie hills in large bales on cleverly con- 
structed racks saddled to the backs of bullocks, and in one 
field we saw a man who had just come to his little field 
with an enormous load borne upon his easel-like packing 
appliance. Thus we find the Koreans also adopting the 
rice crop, which yields heavily under conditions of abun- 




T}g. 213.— Rice paddies at head of mountain valley, 
ttie hill lands beyond. 



with scattering pines in 



dant water; we find them supplementing a heavy summer 
rainfall with water from their hills, and bringing to their 
fields besides both green herbage for humus and organic 
matter, and ashes derived from the fuel coming also from 
the hills, in these ways making good the unavoidable losses 
through intense cropping. 

The amount of forest growth in Korea, as we saw it, in 
proximity to the cultivated valleys, is nowhere large and 
is fairly represented in Figs. 210, 213 and 214. There were 
''lear evidences of periodic cutting and considerable 



372 Manchuria and Korea. 

amounts of cordwood split from timber a foot through were 
being brought to the stations on the backs of cattle. In 
some places there was evident and occasionally very seri- 
ous soil erosion, as may be seen in Fig. 214, one such region 
being passed just before reaching Kinusan, but generally 
the hills are well rounded and covered with a low growth 
of shrubs and herbaceous plants. 

Southernmost Korea has the latitude of the northern 
boundary of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Miss- 
issippi, while the northeast corner attains that of Madison, 




Fig. 214. — Looking across flelris of wheat at an eroding hillside over which 
forest growth is being allowed to spread. 

Wisconsin, and the northern boundary of Nebraska, the 
country thus spanning some nine degrees and six hundred 
miles of latitude. It has an area of some 82,000 square 
miles, about equaling the state of Minnesota, but much of 
its surface is occupied by steep hill and mountain land. 
The rainy season had not yet set in, June 23rd. Wheat 
and the small grains were practically all harvested south- 
ward of Seoul and the people were everywhere busy with 
their flails threshing in the open, about the dwellings or in 
the fields, four flails often beating together on the same 
lot of grain. As we journeyed southward the valleys and 
the fields became wider and more extensive, and the crops, 
as well as the cultural methods, were clearly much better. 



Rice Irrigaiion . 



373 



Neither the foot-power, animal-power, nor the wooden 
chain pump of the Chinese were observed in Korea in use 
for lifting water, but we saw many instances of the long 
handled, spoonlike swinging scoop hung over the water by 
a cord from tall tripods, after the manner seen in Fig. 215, 
each operated by one man and apparently with high effi- 
ciencv for low lifts. Two instances also were observed of 




Fig. 215. — Korean swinging scoop for irrigation 
where the water is raised three or four feet. 



the form of lift seen in Fig. 173, where the man walks the 
circumference of the wheel, so commonlj' observed in Japan. 
Much hemp was being grown in southern Korea but evers^- 
where on very small isolated areas which flecked the land- 
scape with the deepest green, each little field probably rep- 
resenting the crop of a single family. 

It was 6 :30 P. JI. when our train reached Fusan after 
a hot and dusty ride. The service had been good and 
fairly comfortable but the ice-water tanks of American 



374 Manchuria and Korea. 

trains were absent, their place being supplied by cooled 
bottled waters of various brands, including soda-water, sold 
by Japanese boys at nearlj' every important station. Close 
connection was made by trains with steamers to and from 
Japan and we went directly on board the Iki Maru which 
was to weigh anchor for Moji and Shimonoseki at 8 P. M. 
Although small, the steamer was well equipped, providing 
the best of service. We were fortunate in having a smooth 
passage, anchoring at 6:30 the next morning and making 
close connection with the train for Nagasaki, landing at 
the wharf with the aid of a steam launch. 

Our ride by train through the island of Kyushu carried 
us through scenes not widely different from those we had 
.iust left. The journey was continuously among fields of 
rice, with Korean features strongly marked but usually un- 
der better and more intensified culture, and the season, too, 
was a little more advanced. Here the plowing was being 
done mostly with horses instead of the heavy bullocks so 
exclusively employed in Korea. Coming from China into 
Korea, and from there into Japan, it appeared very clear 
that in agricultural methods and appliances the Koreans 
and Japanese are more closely similar than the Chinese 
and Koreans, and the more we came to see of the Japanese 
methods the more strongly the impression became fixed that 
the Japanese had derived their methods either from the 
Koreans or the Koreans had taken theirs more largely from 
Japan than from China. 

It was on this ride from Moji to Nagasaki that we were 
introduced to the attractive and very satisfactory manner 
of serving lunches to travelers on the trains in Japan. At 
important stations hot tea is brought to the car windows 
in small glazed, earthemware teapots provided with cover 
and bail, and accompanied with a teacup of the same ware. 
The set and contents could be purchased for five sen, two 
and a half cents, our currency. All tea is served without 
milk or sugar. The lunches were very substantial and put 
together in a neat sanitary manner in a three-compartment 
wooden box, carefully made from clear lumber joined with 



Railroad LuiicJi. 375 

wooden pegs and perfect joints. Packed in the cover we 
found a paper napkin, toothpicks and a pair of chop- 
sticks. In the second compartment there were thin slices 
of meat, chicken and fish, together with bamboo sprouts, 
pickles, cakes and small bits of salted vegetables, while 
the lower and chief compartment was filled with rice cooked 
quite stifl: and without salt, as is the custom in the three 
countries. The box was about six inches long, four inches 
deep and three and a half inches wide. These lunches are 
handed to travelers neatly wrapped in spotless thin white 
paper daintily tied with a bit of color, all in exchange for 
25 sen, — 12.5 cents. Thus for fifteen cents the traveler is 
handed, through the car window, in a respectful manner, 
a square meal which lie may eat at his leisure. 



XVII. 
RETUEN TO JAPAN. 



We had returned to Japan in the midst of the first rainy 
season, and all the day through, June 25th, and two 
nights, a gentle rain fell at Nagasaki, almost without in- 
terruption. Across the narrow street from Hotel Japan 
were two of its guest houses, standing near the front of 
a wall-faced terrace rising twenty-eight feet ahove the 
street and facing the beautiful harbor. They were acces- 
sible only by winding stone steps shifting on paved land- 
ings to continue the ascent between retaining walls over- 
hung with a wealth of shrubbery clothed in the densest 
foliage, so green and liquid in the drip of the rain, that 
one almost felt like walking edgewise amid stairs lest the 
drip should leave a stain. Over such another series of 
steps, but longer and more winding, we found our way to 
the American Consulate where in the beautifully secluded 
quarters Consul-General Scidmore escaped many annoy- 
ances of settling the imagined petty grievances arising be- 
tween American tourists and the ricksha boys. 

Through the kind offices of the Imperial University of 
Sapporo and of the National Department of Agriculture 
and Commerce, Professor Tokito met us at Nagasaki, to act 
as escort through most of the journey in Japan. Our first 
visit was to the prefectural Agricultural Experiment Sta- 
tion at Nagasaki. There are forty others in the four main 
islands, one to an average area of 4280 square miles, and 
to each 1,200,000 people. 



Japanese Gardens. 377 

The island of Kyushu, whose latitude is that of middle 
Mississippi and north Louisiana, has two rice harvests, and 
gardeners at Nagasaki grow three crops, each year. The 
gardener and his familj' work about five t-an, or a little 
less than one and one-quarter acres, realizing an annual 
return of some $250 per acre. To maintain these earnings 
fertilizers are applied rated worth $60 per acre, divided 
between the three crops, the materials used being largely 
the wastes of the city, animal manure, mud from the drains, 
fuel ashes and sod. all composted together. If this ex- 
penditure for fertilizers appears high it must be remem- 
bered that nearly the whole product is sold and that there 
are three crops each year. Such intense culture requires 
a heavy return if large yields are maintained. Good agri- 
cultural lands were here valued at 300 yen per tan, ap- 
proximately $600 per acre. 

When returning toward Moji to visit the Agricultural 
Experiment Station of Fukuoka prefecture, the rice along 
the first portion of the route was standing about eight 
inches above the water. Large lotus ponds along the way 
occupied areas not readily drained, and the fringing fields 
between the rice paddies and the unfilled hill lands were 
bearing squash, maize, beans and Irish potatoes. !Many 
small areas had been set to sweet potatoes on close narrow 
ridges, the tops of which were thinly strewn with green 
grass, or sometimes with straw or other litter, for shade 
and to prevent the soil from washing and baking in the 
hot sun after rains. At Kitsu we passed near Government 
salt works, for the manufacture of salt by the evaporation 
of sea water, this industry' in Japan, as in China, being a 
Government monopoly. 

Many bundles of grass and other green herbage were 
collected along the way, gathered for use in the rice fields. 
In other cases the green manure had already been 
spread over the flooded paddies and was being worked 
beneath the surface, as seen in Fig. 216. At this time the 
hill lands were clothed in the richest, deepest green but the 
tree growth was nowhere large except immediately about 



■^78 Return to Japan. 

temples, and was usually in distinct small areas with sharp 
boundaries occasioned by differences in age. Some tracts 
had been very recently cut ; others were in their second, 
third or fourth years; while others still carried a growth 
of perhaps seven to ten years. At one village man}^ bun- 
dles of the brush fuel had been gathered from an adjacent 
area, recently cleared. 

A few fields were still bearing their crop of soy beans 
planted in February between rows of grain, and the green 
herbage was being worked into the flooded soil, for the 
crop of rice. Much compost, brought to the fields, was 
stacked with layers of straw between, laid straight, the 
alternate courses at right angles, holding the piles in rec- 
tangular form with vertical sides, some of which were 
four to six feet high and the layers of compost about six 
inches thick. 

Just before reaching Tanjiro a region is passed where 
orchards of the candleberry tree occupy high leveled areas 
between rice paddies, after the manner described for the 
mulberry orchards in Chekiang, China. These trees, when 
seen from a distance, have quite the appearance of our 
apple orchards. 

At the Fukuoka Experiment Station we learned that the 
usual depth of plowing for the rice fields Is three fnd a 
half to four and a half inches, but that deeper plowing 
gives somewhat larger yields. As an average of five years 
trials, a depth of seven to eight inches increased the yield 
from seven to ten per cent over that of the usual depth. 
In this prefecture grass from the bordering hill lands is 
applied to the rice fields at rates ranging from 3300 to 
16,520 pounds green weight per acre, and, according to 
analyses given, these amounts would carry to the fields 
from 18 to 90 pounds of nitrogen ; 12.4 to 63.2 pounds of 
potassium, and 2.1 to 10.6 pounds of phosphorus per acre. 

Where bean cake is used as a fertilizer the applications 
may be at the rate of 496 pounds per acre, carrying 33.7 
pounds of nitrogen, nearly 5 pounds of phosphorus and 
7.4 pounds of potassium. The earth composts are chiefly 



Fcrtili:<_rs for Rice and Barleij. ;]79 

applied to the dry land fields and then only after they 
are well rotted, the fermentation being carried through at 
least sixty days, during which the material is turned three 
times for aeration, the work being done at the home. When 
used on the riee fields where water is abundant the com- 
posts are applied in a less fermented condition. 

The best 3ields of rice in this prefecture are some eighty 
l)ushels per acre, and crops of barlej' may even exceed 
this, the two crops being grown the same year, the rice fol- 
lowing the barley. In most parts of Japan the grain food 
of the laboring people is about 70 per cent naked barley 
mixed with 30 per cent of rice, both cooked and used in 
the same manner. The barley has a lower market value 
and its use permits a larger share of the riee to be sold as 
a money crop. 

The soils are fertilized for each crop every year and the 
prescription for barley and rice recommended by the Ex- 
periment Station, for growers in this prefecture, is indi- 
cated by the following table : 

FERTILIZATION FOR XAKED BARLEY. 

Pounds per acre. 

Fertilizers. N P K 

Manure compost 6,613 33.0 7.4 33.8 

Rape seed cake 330 16.7 2.8 3.5 

Night soil 4,630 26.4 2.6 10.2 

Superphosphate 132 .... 9.9 .... 

Sum 11,705 76.1 22.7 47.5 

FERTILIZATION FOR PADDY RICE. 

Manure eotnpost 5,291 26.4 5.9 27.1 

Green manure, soy beans 3,306 19.2 1.1 19.6 

Soy bean cake 397 27.8 1.7 6.4 

Superphosphate 198 12.8 

Sum 9,192 73.4 21.5 63.1 

Total for year 20,897 149.5 44.2 100.6 

Where these recommendations are followed there is an 
annual application of fertilizer material which aggregates 
some ten tons per acre, carrying about 150 pounds of ni- 
trogen, 44 pounds of phosphorus and 100 pounds of potas- 
sium. The crop yields which have been associated with 



380 



Return to Japan. 



these applications on tlie Station fields are about forty- 
nine bushels of barley and fifty bushels of rice per acre. 
The general rotation recommended for this portion of 
Japan covers five years and consists of a crop of wheat or 
naked barley the first two years with rice as the summer 
crop; in the third year genge, "pink clover" {Astragalus 
sinicns) or some other legume for green manure is the 
winter crop, rice following in the summer ; the fourth year 
rape is the winter crop, from which the seed is saved and 
the ash of the stems returned to the soil, or rarely the 




Fig. 216,— Working green herbage into a flooded rice paddy for green manure, 
preparatory ior the following crop of rice. 

stems themselves may be turned under; on the fifth and 
last year of the rotation the broad kidney or Windsor bean 
is the winter crop, preceding the summer crop of rice. This 
rotation is not general yet in the practice of the farmers 
of the section, they choosing rape or barley and in Febru- 
arv plant Windsor or soy beans between the rows for green 
. manure to use when the rice comes on. 

It was evident from our observations that the use of 
composts in fertilizing was very much more general and ex- 
tensive in China than it was in either Korea or Japan, but, 
to encourage the production and use of compost fertiliz- 
ers, this and other prefectures have provided subsidies 
which permit the payment of $2.50 annually to those farm- 



Agricultural College. 



381 



€i-s who prepare and use on their land a compost heap 
covering twenty to forty square yards, in accordance with 
specified directions given. 

The agricultural college at Fukuoka was not in session 
the day of our visit, it being a holiday usually following 
the close of the last transplanting season. One of the main 
buildings of the station and college is seen in Fig. 217, 
and Figs. 218. 219 and 220, placed together from right to 
left in the order of their numbers, form a panoramic view 




Fig. 217.— One of the main buildings of the Fukuoka Experiment Station. 

of the station grounds and buildings with something of 
the beautiful landscape setting. There is nowhere in 
Japan the lavish expenditure of money on elaborate and 
imposing architecture which characterizes American col- 
leges and stations, biit in equipment for research work, 
both as to professional staff and appliances, they com- 
pare favorably with similar institutions in America. The 
dormitory system was in vogue in the college, providing 
room and board at eight yen per month, or four dollars of 
our currency. Eight students were assigned to one com- 
modious room, each provided with a study table, but beds 
were mattresses spread upon the matting floor at night 
and compactly stored on closet shelves during the day. 
The Japanese plow, which is very similar to the Korean 



382 



Return to Japan. 




Fnhuiiha ExpcruncH'i Station. 



383 




384 



Return to Japan. 




Ricr Fields and Bamboo. 385 

type, may he seen in Fig. 221. tlie one on the right costing 
2.5 yen and the other 2 yen. With the aid of the single 
handle and the sliding rod held in the right hand, the 
course of the plow is directed and the plow tilted in either 
direction, throwing the soil to the right or the left. 

The nursery beds for rice breeding experiments and 
variety tests by this station are shown in Fig. 222. Al- 
though these plots are flooded the marginal plants, adja- 
cent to the free water paths, were materially larger than 
those within and had a much deeper green color, showing 
better feeding, but what seemed most strange was the fact 
that these stronger plants are never used in transplanting, 
as thev do not thrive as well as those less vigorous. 

"We left the island of Kyushu in the evening of June 
29th. crossing to the main island of Honshu, waiting in 
Shimonoseki for the morning train. The rice planted val- 
leys near Shimonoseki were relatively broad and the pad- 
dies had all been recently set in close rows about a foot 
apart and in hills in the rows. Mountain and hill lands 
were closely wooded, largel.v M'itli coniferous trees about 
the base but toward and at the summits, especially on the 
south slopes, they were green only with herbage 
cut for fertilizing and feeding stock. Many very 
small trees, often not more than one foot high, were 
growing on the recently cut-over areas ; tall slender grace- 
ful bamboos clustered along the way and everywhere threw 
wonderful beauty into the landscape. Cartloads of their 
slender stems, two to four inches in diameter at the base 
and twenty or more feet long, were moving along the 
generally excellent, narrow, seldom fenced roads, such as 
seen in Fig. 223. On the borders and pathways between 
rice paddies many small stacks of straw were in waiting 
to be laid between the rows of transplanted rice, tramped 
beneath the water and overspread with mud to enrich the 
soil. The farmers here, as elsewhere, must contend against 
the scouring rush, varieties of grass and our common pig- 
weeds, even in the rice fields. The large area of moun- 
25 



386 



Return to Japan. 



tain and hill land compared with that which could be 
tilled, and the relatively small area of cultivated land 
not at this time under water and planted to rice persisted 
throughout the journey. 




Pig. 221. — Two Japanese plows. 



If there could be any monotony for the traveller new 
to this land of beauty it must result from the quick shift- 
ing of scenes and in the way the landscapes are pieced 



A Bit of the Journey. 387 

together, out-doing the craziest patchwork woman ever at- 
tempted ; the bits are almost never large; they are of 
every shape, even puckered and crumpled and tilted at 
all angles. Here is a bit of the journey : Beyond Habu 
the foothills are thickly wooded, largely with conifers. The 
valley is extremely narrow with only small areas for rice. 
Bamboo are growing in congenial places and we pass 
bundles of wood cut to stove length, as seen in Fig. 224. 
Then we cross a long narrow valley practically all in rice, 
and then another not half a mile wide, just before reach- 







j-^»* 












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Kg. 222.— Plant breeding and variety test nursery rice plats, at Fulmoka 
Experiment Station. 

ing Asa. Beyond here the fields become limited in area 
with the bordering low hills recently cut over and a new 
growth springing up over them in the form of small shrubs 
among which are many pine. Now we are in a narrow 
valley between small rice fields or with none at all, but 
dash into one more nearly level with wide areas in rice 
chiefly on one side of the track just before reaching Onoda 
at 10 :30 A. M. and continuing three minutes ride beyond, 
when we are again between hills without fields and where 
the trees are pine with clumps of bamboo. In four min- 
utes more we are among small rice paddies and at 10:35 
have passed another gap and are crossing another valley 



388 



Return to Japan. 



checkered with rice fields and lotus ponds, but in one min- 
ute more the hills have closed in, leaving only room for 
the track. At 10:37 we are running along a narrow val- 
lej^ with its terraced rice paddies where many of the hills 
show naked soil among the bamboo, scattering pine and 
other small trees; then we are out among garden patches 
thickly mulched with straw. At 10 :38 we are between 
higher hills with but narrow areas for rice stretching close 





if'u^;: ■ ■■ :^|:^^^^ 


'^^m'^^M^^M 




^:<. v'>^^^^^^^H^^H|^^^^^H^B 


^-^:._, '^'^'''W^ 



rig. 223. — Public highway in Japan. 

along the track, but in two minutes these are passed and 
we are among low hills with terraced dry fields. At 10 :42 
we are spinning along the level valley with its rice, but are 
quickly out again among hills with naked soil where ero- 
sion was marked. This is just before passing Funkai where 
we are following the course of a stream some sixty feet 
wide with but little cultivated land in small areas. At 10 :47 
we are again passing narrow rice fields near the track where 
the people are busy weeding with their hands, half knee- 
deep in water. At 10 :53 we enter a broader valley stretch- 
ing far to the south and seaward, but we had crossed it 



RemarlxCihh Beauiy. 



389 



in one minute, sliot through another gap, and at 10 ;55 are 
traversing a much broader valley largely given over to 
rice, but where some of the paddies were bearing matting 
rush set in rows and in hills after the manner of rice. It 
is here we pass Oyou and just bej'ond cross a stream con- 
fined between levees built some distance back from either 
bank. At 11 ;17 this plain is left and we enter a narrow 
valley without fields. Thus do most of the agricultural 





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F;g. 2-24. — Tran.^porting wood to market. Ja?aD. 



lands cf Japan lie in the narrowest valleys, often steeply 
sloping, and into which jutting spurs create the greatest 
irregularity of boundary and slope. 

The journey of this day covered 350 miles in fourteen 
hours, all of the way through a country of remarkable and 
peculiar beauty which can be duplicated nowhere outside 
the mountainous, rice-growing Orient and there only dur- 
ing fifteen days closing the transplanting season. There 
were neither high mountains nor broad valleys, no great 
rivers and but few lakes ; neither rugged naked rocks, tall 



390 



Return to Japan. 




Millkins of Terraces. 391 

forest trees nor wide level fields reaching aWay to un- 
broken horizons. But the low, rounded, soil-mantled moun- 
tain tops clothed in herbaceous and young forest growth 
fell everywhere into lower hills and these into narrow 
steep valleys which dropped by a series of water-level 
benches, as seen in Fig. 225, to the main river courses. 
Each one of these millions of terraces, set about by its 
raised rim, was a silverv sheet of water dotted in the daint- 



tfcg, 
















BHj 


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m 






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*— * 







Fig. 226. — Group of houses standing in rice paddies, on edge of terraces, sur- 
rounded by "water. 

iest manner with bunches of rice just transplanted, but 
not so close nor yet so high and over-spreading as to ob- 
scure the water, yet quite enough to impart to the surface 
a most delicate sheen of green ; and the grass-grown nar- 
row rims retaining the water in the basins, cemented them 
into series of the most superb mosaics, shaped into the val- 
ley bottoms by artizan artists perhaps two thousand years 
before and maintained by their descendants through all 
the years since, that on them the rains and fertility from 
the mountains and the sunshine from heaven might be 
transformed by the rice plant into food for the families 



392 Return to Japan. 

and support for the nation. Two weeks earlier the aspect 
of these landscapes was very different, and two weeks later 
the reflecting water would lie hidden beneath the growing 
and rapidly developing mantle of green, to go on changing 
until autumn, when all would be overspread with the 
ripened harvest of grain. And what intensified the beauty 
of it all was the fact that only along the widest valley bot- 
toms were the mosaics level, except the water surface of 
each individual unit and these were always small. At one 
time we were riding along a descending series of steps and 
then along another rising through a winding valley to dis- 
appear around a projecting spur, and anywhere in the 
midst of it all might be standing Japanese cottages or vil- 
las with the water and the growing rice literally almost 
against the walls, as seen in Fig. 226, while a near-by high 
terrace might hold its water on a level with the chimney- 
tops. Can one wonder that the Japanese loves his country 
or that they are born and bred landscape artists? 

Just before reaching Hongo there were considerable 
areas thrown into long narrow, much raised, east and west 
beds under covers of straw matting inclined at a slight an- 
gle toward the south, some two feet above the ground but 
open toward the north. What crop may have been grown 
here we did not learn but the matting was apparently in- 
tended for shade, as it was hot midsummer weather, and 
we suspect it may have been ginseng. It was here, too, 
that we came into the region of the cidture of matting 
rush, extensively grown in Hiroshima and Okayama pre- 
fectures, but less extensively all over the empire. As with 
rice, the rush is first grown in nursery beds from which 
it is transplanted to the paddies, one acre of nursery sup- 
plying sufficient stock for ten acres of field. The plants 
are set twenty to thirty stalks in a hill in rows seven 
inches apart with the hills six inches from center to center 
in the row. Very high fertilization is practiced, costing 
from 120 to 240 yen per acre, or $60 to $120 annually, 
the fertilizer consisting of bean cake and plant ashes, or 
in recent years, sometimes of sulphate of ammonia for 



Matting Bush. 



393 



nitrogen, and superphosphate of lime. About ten per 
cent of the amount of fertilizer required for the crop is 
applied at the time of fitting the ground, the balance being 
administered from time to time as the season advances. 
Two crops of the rush may be taken from the same ground 
each >'ear or it is grown in rotation with rice, but most 
extensively on the lands less readilv drained and not so 




Pig. 



-Fields of matting rush with recently transplanted rice, and Govern- 
ment salt fields in the background. 



well suited for other crops. Fields of the rush, growing 
in alternation with rice, are seen in Fig. 45, and in Fig. 
227, with the Govermnent salt fields lying along the sea- 
shore beyond. 

With the most vigorous growth the rush attain a hight 
exceeding three feet and the market price varies materially 
with the length of the stems. Good yields, under the best 
culture, may be as high as 6.5 tons per acre of the dry 
stems but the average yield is less, that of 1905 being 8531 



394 



Return to Japan. 




Fig. 



228.— Group of Japanese girls playing tlie game of flower cards, in the 
usual attitude of sitting on the matting-covered floor. 




Pig. 229.— Interior view of a well furnished Kucst room in a Japanese inn, where 
the meals are served on the matting floor and tlie bed is laid. 



Japanese Furnishing. 395 

pounds, for 9655 acres. The value of the product ranges 
from $120 to $200 per acre. 

It is from this material that mats are woven in standard 
sizes, to be laid over padding, upholstering the floors which 
are the seats of all classes in Japan, used in the manner seen 
in Fig. 228 and in Fig. 229, which is a completely furnished 
gnest room in a first class Japanese inn, finished in natural 
unvarnished wood, with walls of sliding panels of trans- 
lucent paper, which may open upon a porch, into a hallway 
or into another apartment ; and with its bouquet, which may 
consist of a single large shapely branch of the purple leaved 
maple, having the cut end charred to preserve it fresh for 
a longer time, standing in water in the vase. 

"Two little maids I've heard of, each with a pretty taste, 
Who had two little rooms to fix and not an hour to waste. 
Eight thousand miles apart they lived, yet on the selfsame day 
The one in Nikko's narrow streets, the other on Broadway, 
They started out, each happy maid her heart's desire to find, 
And her own dear room to furnish just according to her mind. 

"When Alice went a-shopping, she bought a bed of brass, 

A bureau and som-e chairs and things and such a lovely glass 

To reflect her little figure — with two candle brackets near — 

And a little dressing table that she said was simply dear! 

A book shelf low to hold her books, a little china rack. 

And then, of course, a bureau set and lots of bric-a-brac; 

A dainty little escritoire, with fixings all her own 

And just for her convenience, too, a little telephone. 

Some oriental rugs she got, and curtains of madras. 

With 'cunning* ones of lace inside, to go against the glass; 

And then a couch, a lovely one, with cushions soft to crush. 

And forty pillows, more or less, of linen, silk and plush; 

Of all the ornaments besides I couldn't tell the half. 

But wherever there was nothing else, she stuck a photograph. 

And then, when all was finished, she sighed a little sigh. 

And looked about with just a shade of sadness in her eye: 

'For it needs a statuette or so — a fern — a silver stork — 

Oh, something, just to fill it up!' said Alice of New York. 

When little Oumi of Japan went shopping, pitapat, 

She bought a fan of paper and a little sleeping mat; 

She set beside the window a lily in a vase, 

And looked about with more than doubt upon her pretty face: 

'For, really — don't you think so? — with the lily and the fan. 

It's a little overcrowded!' said Oumi of Japan." 

(MargarPt Johnson in St. Nicholas Magazine) 



396 Return to Japan. 

In the rural homes of Japan during 1906 there were 
woven 14,497,058 sheets of these floor mats and 6,628,772 
sheets of other matting, having a combined value of 
$2,815,040, and in addition, from the best quality of rush 
grown upon the same ground, aggregating 7657 acres that 
year, there were manufactured for the export trade, fancy 
mattings having the value of $2,274,131. Here is a total 
value, for the product of the soil and for the labor put into 
the manufacture, amounting to $664 per acre for the area 
named. 

At the Akashi agricultural experiment station, under 
the Directorship of Professor Ono, we saw some of the 
methods of fruit culture as practiced in Japan. He was 
conducting experiments with the object of improving 
methods of heading and training pear trees, to wliieh ref- 
erence was made on page 22. A study was also Ix'ing 
made of the advantages and disadvantages associated with 
covering the fruit with paper bags, examples of which are 
seen in Figs. 6 and 7. The bags were being made at the 
time of our visit, from old newspapers cut, folded and 
pasted by women. Naked cultivation was practiced in the 
orchard and fertilizers consisting of fish guano and super- 
phosphate of lime were being applied, twice each year in 
amounts aggregating a cost of twenty-four dollars per 
acre. 

Pear orchards of native varieties, in good bearing, yield 
returns of 150 yen per tan, and those of European varie- 
ties, 200 yen per tan, which is at the rate of $300 and $400 
per acre. The bibo so extensively grown in China was 
being cultivated here also and was jaelding about $320 
per acre. 

It was here that we first met the cultivation of a variety 
of burdock grown from the seed, three crops being taken 
each season where the climate is favorable, or as one of 
three in the multiple crop system. It is grown for the 
root, yielding a crop valued at $40 to $50 per acre. One 
crop, planted' in March, was being harvested July 1st. 



Sight !^(AI, Lime, Cornpost. 397 

During our ride to Akaslii on the earh' morning train 
we passed long processions of carts drawn by cattle, horses 
or by men, moving along the country road which paralleled 
the railway, all loaded with the waste of the city of Kobe, 
going to its destination in the fields, some of it a distance 
of twelve miles, where it was sold at from 5-i cents to $1.63 
per ton. 

At several places along our route from Shimonoseki to 
Osaka we had observed the application of slacked lime to 
the water of the rice fields, but in this prefecture, Hyogo, 
where the station is located, its use was prohibited in 1901, 
except under the direction of the station authorities, where 
the soil was acid or where it was needed on account of in- 
sect troi'bles. Up to tlds time it had been the custom of 
farmers to appl.r slacked lime at the rate of three to five 
tons per acre, paying for it $4.84 per ton. The first re- 
strictive legislation permitted the use of 82 pounds of 
lime with each 827 pounds of organic manure, but as the 
farmers persisted in using much larger quantities, com- 
plete prohibition was resorted to. 

Reference has been made to subsidies encouraging the 
use of composts, and in this prefecture prizes are awarded 
for the best compost heaps in each county, examinations 
being made by a committee. The composts receiving the 
four higliest awards in each county are allowed to compete 
with these in other counties for a prefectural prize awarded 
by another committee. 

The "pink clover" grown in Hyogo after rice, as a green 
manure crop, yields under favorable conditions twenty 
tons of the green product per acre, and is usually applied 
to about three times the area upon which it grew, at the 
rate of 6.6 tons per acre, the stubble and roots serving for 
the ground upon which the crop grew. 

On July 3rd we left Osaka, going south through Sakai 
to "Wakayama, thence east and north to the Nara Experi- 
ment Station. After passing the first two stations the 



398 



Return to Japan. 



route lay through a very flat, highly cultivated garden sec- 
tion with cucumbers trained on trellises, many squash in 
full bloom, with fields of taro, ginger and many other 
vegetables. Beyond Hamadera considerable areas of flat 









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rig. 230.— Distribution ol old stubble and the working of It beneath the water 

and mud to serve as fertilizer. 



sandy land had been set close with piue, but with inter- 
vening areas in rice, where the growers were using the re- 
volving weeder seen in Fig. 14. At Otsu broad areas are 
in rice but here worked with the short handled claw weed- 
ers, and stubble from a former crop had been drawn to- 
gether into small piles, seen in Pig. 230, which later would 
be carefully distributed and worked beneath the mud. 



Irrigating Bice. 



399 



Much of the mountain lands in this region, growing 
pine, is owned by private parties and the growth is cut 
at intervals of ten, twenty or twenty-five years, being sold 
on the ground to those who will come and cut it at a price 
of forty sen for a one-horse load, as already described, 
page 160. 

The course from here was up the rather rapidly rising 




rig. 231.— Irrigating with the Japanese clrcumlerential foot-power water wbeel, 
near Haslumoto, Japan. 



Kiigawa valley where much water was being applied to 
the rice fields by various methods of pumping, among them 
numerous current wheels ; an occasional power-pump driven 
by cattle ; and very commonly the foot-power wheel where 
the man walks on the circumference, steadying himself with 
a long pole, as seen in the field, Fig. 231. It was here that 
a considerable section of the hill slope had been very re- 
cently cut over, the area showing light in the engraving. 
It was in the vicinity of Hashimoto on this route, too, that 



400 Return to Japan. 

the two beautiful views reproduced in Figs. 151 and 152 
were taken. 

At the experiment station it was learned that within the 
prefecture of Nara, having a population of 558,314, and 
107,574 acres of cultivated land, two-thirds of this was in 
paddy rice. Within the province there are also about one 
thousand irrigation reservoirs with an average depth of 
eight feet. The rice fields receive 16.32 inches of irrigation 
water in addition to the rain. 

Of the imcultivated hill lands, some 2500 acres con- 
tribute green manure for fertilization of fields. Reference 
has been made to the production of compost for fertilizers 
on page 211. The amount recommended in this prefecture 
as a yearly application for two crops grown is: 

Organic matter __ 3,711 to 4,640 lbs. per acre 

Nitrogen 105 to 131 lbs. per acre 

Phosphorus 35 to 44 lbs. per acre 

Potassium 56 to 70 lbs. per acre 

These amounts, on the basis of the table, p. 214, are 
nearly sufficient for a crop of thirty bushels of wheat, fol- 
lowed by one of thirty bushels of rice, the phosphorus 
being in excess and the potassium not quite enough, sup- 
posing none to he derived from other sources. 

At the Nara hotel, one of the beautiful Japanese inns 
where we stopped, our room opened upon a second story 
veranda from which one looked down upon a beautiful, 
tiny lakelet, some twenty by eighty feet, within a diminu- 
tive park scarcely more than one hundred by two hundred 
feet, and the lakelet had its grassy, rocky banks over-hung 
with trees and shrubs planted in all the wild disorder and 
beauty of nature; bamboo, willow, fir, pine, cedar, red- 
leaved maple, catalpa, with other kinds, and through these, 
along the shore, wound a woodsy, well trodden, narrow 
footpath leading from the inn to a half hidden cottage ap- 
parently quarters for the maids, as they were frequently 
passing to and fro. A suggestion of how such wild beauty 
is brought right to the very doors in Japan may be gained 



The Cttfi's Wcu^ic. 



401 



from Fig. 232. which is an instance of parking effect on a 
still smaller scale than that described. 

On the morning of July 6th, with two men for each of 
our rickshas, we left the Yaami hotel for the Kyoto Ex- 
periment station, some two miles to the southwest of the 
city limits. As soon as we had entered upon the country 
road we found ourselves in a procession of cart men each 




Fig. 232.— Beauty at home in Japan. 



drawing a load of six large covered receptacles of about 
ten gallons capacity, and filled with the city's waste. Be- 
fore reaching the station we had passed fifty -two of these 
loads, and on our return the procession was still moving 
in the same direction and we passed sixty-one others, so 
that during at least five hours there had moved over this 
section of road leading into the country-, away from the city, 
not less than ninety tons of waste; along other roadways 
similar loads were moving. These freight carts and those 
drawn by horses and bullocks were all provided with long 
" 26 



402 



Return to Japan. 



racks similar to that illustrated in Fig. 108, page 197, and 
when the load is not sufficient to cover the full length it is 
always divided equally and placed near each end, thus 
taking advantage of the elasticity of the body to give the 
effect of springs, lessening the draft and the wear and tear. 
One of the most common commodities coming into the 
city along the country roads was fuel from the hill lands, in 
split sticks tied in bundles as represented in Fig. 224; as 




Fig. 233.- 



-Very old cberry tree in Maruyaaml park, Kyoto, wltb its llmba 
supported to fc'iiard against injury from winds. 



bundles of limbs twenty-four to thirty inches, and some- 
times four to six feet, long; and in the form of charcoal 
made from trunks and stems one and a half inches to six 
inches long, and baled in straw matting. Most of the 
draft animals used in Japan are either cows, bulls or stal- 
lions; at least we saw very few oxen and few geldings. 

As early as 1895 the Government began definite steps 
looking to the improvement of horse breeding, appointing 
at that time a commission to devise comprehensive plans. 
This led to progressive steps finally culminating in 1906 



Horse Breeding. 



403 



in the Horse Administration Bureau, whose duties were to 
extend over a period of thirty years, divided into two in- 
tervals, the first, eighteen and the second, twelve years. 
During the first interval it is contemplated that the Gov- 
ernment shall acquire 1,500 stallions to be distributed 
throughout the country for the use of private individuals, 
and during the second period it is the expectation that the 
system will have completelj^ renovated the stock and fa- 




Pig. 23-1. — Admiring cherry blossoms. 



miliarized the people with proper methods of management 
so that matters may be left in their hands. 

As our main purpose and limited time required undi- 
vided attention to agricultural matters, and of these to 
the long established practices of the people, we could give 
but little time to sight-seeing or even to a study of the 
efforts being made for the introduction of improved agri- 
cultural methods and practices. But in the very old city 
of Kyoto, which was the seat of the Mikado 's court from be- 



404 



Retnrn to Japan. 




Fig. 235. — Entrance way to Kiyomizu temple, Kyoto. 



Kiyomizu-dera. 405 

fore 800 A. D. until 1868, we did pay a short visit to tlie 
Kiyomizu temple, situated some three hundred yards south 
from the Yaami hotel, which faces the ^Maruyaami park 
with its centuries-old giant cherry tree, having a trunk of 
more than four feet through and wide spreading branches, 
now much propped up to guard against accident, as seen 
in Fig. 233. These cherr\' trees are very extensively used 
for ornamental purposes in Japan with striking effect. The 
tree does not produce an edible fruit, but is verj' beautiful 
when in full bloom, as may be seen from Fig. 234. It was 
these trees that were sent by the Japanese government to 
this country for use at Washington but the first lot were 
destroyed becaiise they were found to be infested and 
threatened danger to native trees. 

Kyoto stands amid surroundings of wonderful beauty, 
the site apparently ha^'ing been selected with rare acumen 
for its possibilities in large landscape effects, and these 
have been developed with that fullness and richness which 
the greatest artists might be content to approach. "We are 
thinking particularly of the Kiyomizu-dera, or rather of 
the marvelous beauty of tree and foliage which has over- 
grown it and swept far up and over the mountain summit, 
leaving the temple half hidden at the base. No words, 
no brush, no photographic art can transfer the effect. One 
must see to feel the influence for which it was created, and 
scores of people, very old and very young, nearly all Jap- 
anese, and more of them on that day from the poorer 
rather than from the well-to-do class, were there, all with- 
drawing reluctantly, like ourselves, looking backward, un- 
der the spell. So potent and impressive was that some- 
thing from the great overshadowing beautj^ of the moun- 
tain, that all along up the narrow, shop-lined street lead- 
ing to the gateway of the temple, seen in Fig. 235, the tini- 
est bits of park effect were flourishing in the most im- 
possible situations; and as Professor Tokito and myself 
were coming away we chanced upon six little roughly 
dressed lads laying out in the sand an elaborate little park, 



406 



Return to Japan. 




,0 -'-' 



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as W 









Landscape Artists. 



407 



quite nine by twelve feet. They must have been at it 
hours, for there were ponds, bridges, tiny hills and ravines 
and much planting in moss and other little greens. So 
intent on their task were they that we stood watching full 
two minutes before our presence attracted their attention, 
and yet the oldest of the group must have been under ten 
years of age. 




rig, 237.— Japanese park seats at Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto. 



One partly hidden vdew of the temple is seen in Fig. 236, 
the dense mountain verdure rising above and beyond it. 
And then too, within the temple, as the peasant men and 
women came before the shrine and grasped the long de- 
pending rope knocker, with the heavy knot in front of the 
great gong, swinging it to strike three rings, announcing 
their presence before their God, then kneeling to offer 
prayers, one could not fail to realize the deep sincerity and 
faith expressed in face and manner, while they were obliv- 



408 



Return to Japan. 




Landscape Aii. 



409 



ious to all else. Xo Cliristian was ever more devout and 
one may well doubt if any ever arose from prayer more 
uplifted than these. Who need believe they did not look 
beyond the imagery and commune with the Eternal Spirit? 
A third view of the same temple, showing resting places 
beneath the shade, which serve the pui-pose of lawn seats 
in our parks, is seen in Fig. 237. 



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rig 239. — street flower-vender, Japan. 



That a high order of the esthetic sense is born t« the 
Japanese people ; that they are masters of the science of 
the beautiful; and that there are artists among them ca- 
pable of eifective and impressive results, is revealed in a 
hundred ways, and one of these is the iris garden of Fig, 
238. One sees it here in the biilrushes which make the 
iris feel at home; in the tmobtrusive semblance of a log 
that seems to have fallen across the run ; in the hard beaten 



410 Return to Japatu 

narrow path and the sore toes of the old pine tree, telling 
of the hundreds that come and go ; it is seen in the dress 
and pose of the ladies, and one niaj^ be sure the photog- 
rapher felt all that he saw and fixed so well. 

The vender of Oumi's lily that Margaret Johnson saw, 
is in Fig. 239. There another is bartering for a spray of 
flowers, and thus one sold the branch of red maple leaves 
in our room at the Nara inn. His floral stands are borne 
along the streets pendant from the usual carrying pole. 

When returning to the city from the Kyoto Experiment 
Station several fields of Japanese indigo were passed, 
growing in water under the conditions of ordinary rice 
culture, Fig. 240 being a view of one of these. The plant 
is Poligonum tinctoria., a close relative of the smartweed. 
Before the importation of aniline and alizarin dyes, which 
amounted in 1907 to 160,558 pounds and 7,170,320 pounds 
respectively, the cultivation of indigo was much more ex- 
tensive than at present, amounting in 1897 to 160,460,000 
pounds of the dried leaves ; but in 1906 the production had 
fallen to 58,696,000 pounds, forty-five per cent of which 
was grown in the prefecture of Tokushima in the eastern 
part of the island of Shikoku. The population of this pre- 
fecture is 707,565, or 4.4 people to each of the 159,450 
acres of cultivated field, and yet 19,969 of these acres bore 
the indigo crop, leaving more than five people to each food- 
producing acre. 

The plants for this crop are started in nursery beds in 
February and transplanted in May, the first crop being 
cut the last of June or first of July, when the fields are 
again fertilized, the stubble throwing out new shoots and 
yielding a second cutting the last of August or early Sep- 
tember. A crop of barley may have preceded one of 
indigo, or the indigo may be set following a crop of rice. 
Such practice, with the high fertilization for every crop, 
goes a long way toward suppljdng the necessary food. The 
dense population, too, has permitted the manufacture of 
the indigo as a home industry among the farmers, enabl- 
ing them to exchange the spare labor of the family for 



Indigo. 



411 



cash. The manufactured product from the reduced plant- 
ing in 1907 was worth $1,30'±,610, forty-tive per cent of 
which was the output of the rural population of the pre- 
fecture of Tokushima, which they could exchange for rice 
and other necessaries. The land in rice in this prefecture 
in 1907 was 73.816 acres, yielding 114,380,000 pounds, or 
more than 161 pounds to each man, woman and child, and 
there were 65.665 acres hearing other crops. Besides this 
there are 874.208 acres of mountain and hill land in the 




Fig. 240. — Field of Japanese indigo, PoJignnumiinctoria^ just outside the city 

01 Kyoto. 



prefecture which supply fuel, fuel ashes and green manure 
for fertilizer; run-off water for irrigation; lumber and re- 
munerative employment for service not needed in the fields. 
The journey was continued from Kyoto July 7th, talring 
the route leading northeastward, skirting lake Biwa 
which we came upon suddenly on emerging from a tunnel 
as the train left Otani. At many places we passed water- 
wheels such as that seen in Fig. 241, all similarly set, busily 
turning, and usually twelve to sixteen feet in diameter 
but oftenest only as many inches thick. Until we had 



412 



Return to Japan. 



reached Lake Biwa the valle.ys were narrow with only 
small areas in rice. Tea plantations were common on the 
higher cultivated slopes, and gardens on the terraced hill- 
sides growing vegetables of many kinds were common, often 
with the ground heavily mulched with straw, while the 
wooded or grass-covered slopes still further up showed the 
usual systematic periodic cutting. After passing the west 
end of the lake, rice fields were nearly continuous and ex- 




rig. 241.— Type ol water-wheel seen very commoiily on the mountain streams 

in Japan. 

tensive. Before reaching Haehiman we crossed a stream 
leading into the lake but confined between levees more 
than twelve feet high, and we had already passed beneath 
two raised viaducts after leaving Kusatsu. Other crops 
were being grown side by side with the rice on similar 
lands and apparently in rotation with it, but on sharp, 
narrow, close ridges twelve to fourteen inches high. As 
we passed eastward we entered one of the important mul- 
berry districts where the fields are graded to two levels, 



Soils and Crops. 413 

the higher occupied •«'ith mulberry or other crops not re- 
quiring irrigation, while the lower was devoted to rice or 
crops grown in rotation with it. 

On the Kisogawa, at the station of the same name, there 
were four anchored floating water-power mills propelled by 
two pair of large current wheels stationed fore and aft, 
each pair working on a common axle from opposite sides of 
the mill, driven by the force of the current flowing by. 

At Kisogawa we had entered the northern end of one 
of the largest plains of Japan, some thirty miles wide and 
extending forty miles southward to Owari bay. The plain 
has been extensively graded to two levels, the benches be- 
ing usually not more than two feet above the rice paddies, 
and devoted to various dry laud crops, including the mul- 
lierr\-. The soil is decidedly sand.v in character but the 
mean yield of rice for the prefecture is 37 bushels per 
acre and above the average for the country at large. An 
analysis of the soils at the sub-experiment station north of 
Nagoya shows the following content of the three main 
plant food elements. 

Nitrogen Phosptioru? Potassium 

Pounds per million 

In paddy field 

Soil IKQ 769 805 

Subsoil 810 7.56 888 

Id upland field 

Soil 3060 686 1162 

Subsoil — 510 67.3 1204 

The green manure crops on this plain are cliiefly two 
varieties of the "pink clover," one sowed in the fall and 
one about ^fay 15th, the first yielding as high as sixteen 
tons green weight per acre and the other from five to 
eight tons. 

On the plain distant from the mountain and hill land 
the stems of agricultural crops are largely used as fuel 
and the fuel ashes are applied to the fields at the rate of 
10 kan per tan, or 330 pounds per acre, worth $1.20, little 
lime, as such, being used. 

In the prefecture of Aichi, largely in this plain, with 
an area of cultivated land equal to about sixteen of our 



414 Return to Japan. 

government townships, there is a population of 1,752,042, 
or a density of 4.7 per acre, and the number of households 
of farmers was placed at 211,033, thus giving to each farm- 
er's family an average of 1.75 acres, their chief industries 
being rice and silk culture. 

Soon after leaving the Agricultural Experiment Station 
of Aichi prefecture at An Jo we crossed the large Yahagi- 
gawa, flowing between strong levees above the level of the 
rice fields. Mulberries, with burdock and other vegetables 
were growing upon all of the tables raised one to two 
feet above the rice paddies, and these features continued 
past Okasaki, Koda and Kamagori, where the hills in 
many places had been recently cut clean of the low forest 
growth and where we passed many large stacks of pine 
boughs tied in bundles for fuel. After passing Goyu sixty- 
five miles east from Nagoya, mulberry was the chief 
crop. Then came a plain country which had been graded 
and leveled at great cost of labor, the benches with their 
square shoulders standing three to four feet above the 
paddy fields; and after passing Toyohashi some distance 
we were surprised to cross a rather wide section of compar- 
atively level land overgrown with pine and herbaceous 
plants which had evidently been cut and recut many times. 
Beyond Futagawa rice fields were laid out on what ap- 
peared to be similar land but with soil a little finer in tex- 
ture, and still further along were other flat areas not cul- 
tivated. 

At Maisaka quite half the cultivated fields appear to be 
in mulberry with ponds of lotus plants in low places, while 
at Hamamatsu the rice fields are interspersed with many 
square-shouldered tables raised three to four feet and oc- 
cupied with mulberry or vegetables. As we passed upon 
the flood plain of the Tenryugawa, with its nearly dry bed 
of coarse gravel half a mile wide, the dwellings of farm 
villages were many of them surrounded with nearly solid, 
flat-topped, trimmed evergreen hedges nine to twelve feet 
high, of the umbrella pine, forming beautiful and effective 
screens. 



Horticulture. 415 

At Nakaidzumi we had left the mulberry orchards for 
those of tea. riee still holding wherever paddies could be 
formed. Here, too, we met the first fields of tobacco, and 
at Fukuroi and Homouchi large quantities of imported 
ilanchurian bean cake were stacked about the station, hav- 
ing evidently l)een brought by rail. At Kanaya we passed 
through a long tunnel and were in the valley of the 
Oigawa, crossing the broad, nearly dry stream over a 
bridge of nineteen long spans and were then in the prefect- 
ure of Shizuoka where large fields of tea spread far up the 
hillsides, covering extensive areas, but after passing the 
next station, and for seventeen miles before reaching Shi- 
2aioka we traversed a level stretch of nearly continuous rice 
fields. 

The Shizuoka Experiment Station is devoting special at- 
tention to the interests of horticulture, and progress has 
already been made in introducing new fruits of better 
quality and in improving the native varieties. The na- 
tive pears and peaches, as we found them served on the 
hotel tables in either China or Japan, were not particularly 
attractive in either texture or flavor, but we were here 
permitted to test samples of three varieties of ripe figs of 
fine flavor and texture, one of them as large as a good sized 
pear. Three varieties of fine peaches were also shown, one 
unusually large and with delicate deep rose tint, including 
the flesh. If such peaches could be canned so as to re- 
tain their delicate color they would prove very attractive 
for the table. The flavor and texture of this peach was also 
excellent, as was the case with two varieties of pears. 

The station was also experimenting with the production 
of marmalades and we tasted three very excellent brands, 
two of them lacking the bitter flavor. It would appear 
that in Japan, Korea and China there should be a very 
bright future along the lines of horticultural development, 
leading to the utilization of the extensive hill lands of 
these countries and the development of a very ertensive 
export trade, both in fresh fruits and marmalades, pre- 
serves and the canned forms. They have favorable elima- 



416 



Return to Japan. 




Fig. 242. — Views of buildings and grounds at tlie SliizuoJca Experiment Station. 



Orclmrds and Rice. 417 

tic and soil conditions and great numbers of people with 
temperament and habits well suited to the industries, as 
well as an enormous home need which should be met, in 
addition to the large possibilities in the direction of a most 
profitable export trade which would increase opportunities 
for labor and bring needed revenue to the people. In Fig. 
242 are three views at this station, the lower showing a 
steep terraced hillside set with oranges and other fruits, 
holding out a bright promise for the future. 

Peach orchards were here set on the hill lands, the trees 
six feet apart each way. They come into bearing in three 
years, remain productive ten to fifteen years, and the re- 
turns are 50 to 60 yen per tan, or at the rate of $100 to 
$120 per acre. The usual fertilizers for a peach orchard 
are the manure-earth-compost, applied at the rate of 3300 
pounds per acre, and fish guano applied in rotation and at 
the same rate. 

Shizuoka is one of the large prefectures, having a total 
area of 3029 square miles ; 2090 of which are in forest ; 
438 in pasture and genya land, and 501 square miles cul- 
tivated, not quite one-half of which is in paddy fields. 
The mean yield of paddy rice is nearly 33 bushels per acre. 
The prefecture has a population of 1,293,470, or about 
four to the acre of cultivated field, and the total crop of 
rice is such as to provide 236 pounds to each person. 

At many places along the way as we left Shizuoka July 
10th for Tokyo, farmers were sowing broadcast, on the 
water, over their rice fields, some pulverized fertilizer, pos- 
sibly bean cake. Near the railway station of Fuji, and 
after crossing the boulder gravel bed of the Fujikawa 
which was a full quarter of a mile wide, we were traversing 
a broad plain of rice paddies with their raised tables, but 
on them pear orchards were growing, trained to their over- 
head trellises. About Suduzuka grass was being cut with 
sickles along the canal dikes for use as green manure in the 
rice fields, which on the left of the railway, stretched east- 
ward more than six miles to beyond Hara where we passed 
27 



418 



Return to Japan. 



into a tract of dry land crops consisting of mulberry, tea 
and various vegetables, with more or less of dry land rice, 
but we returned to the paddy land again at Numazu, in 
another four miles. Here there were four carloads of beef 
cattle destined for Tokyo or Yokohama, the first we had 
seen. 

It was at this station that the railway turns northward 
to skirt the eastern flank of the beautiful Fuji-yama, rising 




fig. 213. — Japanese ladies eatlns buclcwheat macaroni with cbopsticlis. 



to higher lands of a brown loamy character, showing many 
large boulders two feet in diameter. Horses were here 
moving along the roadways under large saddle loads of 
green grass, going to the paddy fields from the hills, which 
in this section are quite free from all but herbaceous 
growth, well covered and green. Considerable areas were 
growing maize and buckwheat, the latter being ground in- 
to flour and made into macaroni which is eaten with chop- 
sticks, Fig. 243, and used to give variety to the diet of rice 
and naked barley. At Gotenba, where tourists leave the 



Tokyo Plain. 419 

train to ascend Fuji-yama, the road turns eastward again 
and descends rapidly through manj' tunnels, crossing the 
wide gravelly channel of the Sakawagawa, then carrying 
but little water, like all of the other main streams we had 
crossed, although we were in the rainy season. This was 
partly because the season was yet not far advanced ; partly 
because so much water was being taken upon the rice 
fields, and again because the drainage is so rapid down 
the steep slopes and comparatively short water courses. 
Beyond Yamakita the railway again led along a broad 
plain set in paddy rice and the hill slopes were terraced 
and cultivated nearly to their summits. 

Swinging strongly southeastward, the coast was reached 
at Noduz in a hilly countrj- producing chiefly vegetables, 
mulberrj' and tobacco, the latter crop being extensively 
grown eastward nearly to Oiso, beyond which, after a mile 
of sweet potatoes, squash and cucumbers, there were paddy 
iields of rice in a flat plain. Before Hiratsuka was 
reached the rice paddies were left and the train was cross- 
ing a comparatively flat country with a sandy, sometimes 
gravelh', soil where mulberries, peaches, eggplants, sweet 
potatoes and dry land rice were interspersed with areas 
still occupied with small pine and herbaceous growth or 
where small pine had been recently set. Similar condi- 
tions prevailed after we had crossed the broad channel 
of the Banyugawa and well toward and beyond Fujishiwa 
where a leveled plain has its tables scattered among the 
fields of paddy rice, this being the southwest margin of 
the Tokyo plain, the largest in Japan, lying in five prefec- 
tures, whose aggregate area of 1,739,200 acres of arable 
lands was worked by 657,235 families of farmers; 661,613 
acres of which was in paddy rice, producing annually 
some 19,198,000 bushels, or 161 pounds for each of the 
7,194,045 men, women and children in the five prefectures, 
1,818,655 of whom were in the capital city, Tokyo, 

Three views taken in the eastern portion of this plain 
in the prefecture of Chiba, July 17th, are seen in Fig. 



420 



Return to Japan. 




Fie. 244.— Three landscapes in the Tokyo plain, the upper two largely In sweet 
potatoes, following wheat, the lower in peanuts. 



Sfraw as MuIcJi and Fertilizer. 



421 




Pig. 245.— Two methods of utilizing coarse straw and litter tor mulching and 
fertilizing at the same time. 



422 Return to Japan. 

244, in two of which shocks of wheat were still standing 
in the fields among the growing crops, badly weathered 
and the grain sprouting as the result of the rainy season. 
Peanuts, sweet potatoes and millet were the main dry 
land crops then on the ground, with paddy rice in the 
flooded basins. "Windsor beans, rape, wheat and barley 
had been harvested. One family with whom we talked 
were threshing their wheat. The crop had been a good 
one and was yielding between 38.5 and 41.3 bushels per 
acre, worth at the time $35 to $40. On the same land this 
farmer secures a yield of 352 to 361 bushels of potatoes, 
which at the market price at that time would give a gross 
earning of $64 to $66 per acre. 

Reference has been made to the extensive use of straw 
in the cultural methods of the Japanese. This is notably 
the case in their truck garden work, and two phases of 
this are shown in Fig. 245. In the lower section of the 
illustration the garden has been ridged and furrowed for 
transplanting, the sets have been laid and the roots cov- 
ered with a little soil ; then, in the middle section, showing 
the next step in the method, a layer of straw has been 
pressed firmly above the roots, and in the final step this 
would be covered with earth. Adopting this method the 
straw is so placed that (1) it acts as an effective mulch 
without in any way interfering with the capillary rise of 
water to the roots of the sets; (2) it gives deep, thorough 
aeration of the soil, at the same time allowing rains to 
penetrate quickly, drawing the air after it; (3) the ash 
ingredients carried in the straw are leached directly to 
the roots where they are needed; (4) and finally the 
straw and soil constitute a compost where the rapid decay 
liberates plant food gradually and in the place where it 
will be most readily available. The upper section of the 
illustration shows rows of eggplants very heavily mulched 
with coarse straw, the quantity being sufficient to act as a 
most effective mulch, to largely prevent the development 
of weeds and to serve during the rainy season as a very 
material fertilizer. 



Methods of Fertilizing. 



423 



In growing such dr\' land crops as barlej', beans, buck- 
wheat or dry land rice the soil of the field is at first fitted 
by plowing or spading, then furrowed deeply where the 
rows are to be planted. Into these furrows fertilizer is 
placed and covered with a layer of earth upon which the 
seed is planted. When the crop is up, if a second fertiliza- 
tion is desired, a furrow may be made alongside each 




Fig. 2-1^. — Section of soil studj' field, Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station, 
Tokyo, .lapan. 



row, into which the fertilizer is sowed and then covered. 
"When the crop is so far matured that a second may be 
planted, a new furrow is made, either midway between two 
others or ad.jacent to one of them, fertilizer applied and 
covered with a layer of soil and the seed planted. In 
this way the least time possible is lost during the growing 
season, all of the soil of the field doing duty in crop produc- 
tion. 

It was our privilege to visit the Imperial Agricultural 
Experiment Station at Nishigahara, near Tola-o, which 



424 Return to Japan. 

is charged with the leadership of the general and technical 
agricultural research work for the Empire. The work is 
divided into the sections of agriculture, agricultural chem- 
istry, entomology, vegetable pathology, tobacco, horticul- 
ture, stock breeding, soils, and tea manufacture, each with 
their laboratory equipment and research staff, while the 
forty-one prefectural stations and fourteen sub-stations 
are charged with the duty of handling all specific local, 
practical problems and with testing out and applying con- 
clusions and methods suggested by the results obtained at 
the central station, together with the local dissemination 
of knowledge among the farmers of the respective prefec- 
tures. 

A comprehensive soil survey of the arable lands of the 
Empire has been in progress since before 1893, excellent 
maps being issued on a scale of 1 to 100,000, or about 
1.57 inch to the mile, showing the geological formations in 
eight colors with subdivisions indicated by letters. Some 
eleven soil t.ypes are recognized, based on physical compo- 
sition and the areas occupied by these are shown by means 
of lines and dots in black printed over the colors. Typical 
profiles of the soil to depths of three meters are printed as 
insets on each sheet and localities where these apply are 
indicated by corresponding numbers in red on the map. 

Elaborate chemical and physical studies are also being 
made in the laboratories of samples of both soil and sub- 
soil. The Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station is 
well equipped for investigation work along many lines and 
that for soils is notably strong. In Fig. 246 ma.y be seen 
a portion of the large immersed cylinders which are filled 
with typical soils from different parts of the Empire, and 
Fig. 247 shows a portion of another part of their elaborate 
outfit for soil studies which are in progress. 

It is found that nearly all cultivated soils of Japan are 
acid to litmus, and this they are inclined to attribute to 
the presence of acid hydro-aluminum silicates. 

The Island Empire of Japan stretches along the Asiatic 
coast through more than twenty-nine degrees of latitude 



Possible Reclamation. 425 

from the southern extremity of Formosa northward to the 
middle of Saghalin, some 2300 statute miles; or from the 
latitude of middle Cuba to that of north Newfoundland 
and "Winnipeg; but the total land area is only 175,428 
square miles, and less than that of the three states of 
Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Of this total land area 
only 23,698 square miles are at present cultivated; 7151 
square miles in the three main islands are weed and pas- 
ture land. Less than fourteen per cent of the entire land 
area is at present under cultivation. 

If all lands having a slope of less than fifteen degrees 
may be tilled, there yet remain in the four main islands, 
15,400 square miles to bring under cultivation, which is 
an addition of 65.4 per cent to the land already cultivated. 

In 1907 there were in the Empire some 5,814,362 house- 
holds of farmers tilling 15.201,969 acres and feeding 
3,522,877 additional households, or 51,742,398 people. 
This is an average of 3.4 people to the acre of cultivated 
land, each farmer's household tilling an average of 2.6 
acres. 

The lands yet to be reclaimed are being put under culti- 
vation rapidly, the amount improved in 1907 being 64,448 
acres. If the new lands to be reclaimed can be made as 
productive as those now in use there should be opportunity 
for an increase in population to the extent of about 
35,000,000 without changing the present ratio of 3.4 people 
to the acre of cultivated land. 

While the remaining lands to be reclaimed are not as 
inherently productive as those now in use, improvements 
in management will more than compensate for this, and 
the Empire is certain to quite double its present mainte- 
nance capacity and provide for at least a hundred million 
people with many more comforts of home and more satis- 
faction for the common people than they now enjoy. 

Since 1872 there has been an increase in the population 
of Japan amounting to an annual average of about 1.1 
per cent, and if this rate is maintained the one hundred 
million mark would be passed in less than sixty years. It 



426 



Return to Japan. 




Biiral and Ui^an Popniaiknu 427 

appears probable hoTve-per that the increased acreage put 
under cultivation and pasturage combined, will more than 
keep pace with the population up to this limit, while the 
improvement in methods and crops will readily permit a 
second like increment to her population, bringing that for 
the present Empire up to 150 millions. Against this view, 
perhaps, is the fact that the rice crop of the twenty years 
ending in 1906 is only thirty-three per cent greater than 
the crop of 1838. 

In Japan, as in the United States, there has been a 
strong movement from the country to the city as a natural 
result of the large increase in manufactures and commerce, 
and the small amount of land per each farmer's household. 
In 1903 only .23 per cent of the population of Japan were 
living in villages of less than 500, while 79.06 per cent 
were in towns and villages of less than 10,000 people, 20.7 
per cent living in those larger. But in 1894 84.36 per 
cent of the population were living in towns and villages 
of less than 10,000, and only 15.64 per cent were in cities, 
towns and villages of over 10,000 people ; and while during 
these ten years the rural population had increased at the 
rate of 640 per 10,000, in cities the increase had been 6,174 
per 10,000. 

Japan has been and still is essentially an agricultural 
nation and in 1906 there were 3,872,105 farmers' house- 
holds, whose chief work was farming, and 1,581,204 others 
whose subsidiary work was farming, or 60.2 per cent of 
the entire number of households. A like ratio holds in 
Formosa. "Wealthy land owners who do not till their own 
fields are not included. 

Of the farmers in Japan some 33.34 per cent own. and 
work their land. Those having smaller holdings, who 
rent additional land, make up 46.03 per cent of the total 
farmers; while 20.63 per cent are tenants who work 44.1 
per cent of the land. In 1892 only one per cent of the 
land holders owned more than twenty-five acres each; 
those holding between twenty-five acres and five acres made 
up 11.7 per cent; while 87.3 per cent held less than five 



428 Return to Japan. 

acres each. A man owning seventy-five acres of land in 
Japan is counted among the "great land-holders". It is 
never true, however, except in the Hokkaido, which is a 
new country agriculturally, that such holdings lie in one 
body. 

Statistics published in "Agriculture in Japan", by the 
Agricultural Bureau, Department of Agriculture and 
Commerce, permit the following statements of rent, crop 
returns, taxes and expenses, to be made. The wealthy land 
owners who rent their lands receive returns like these: 

For paddy field, Tor upland field, 
per. acre. per acre. 

Eent $27.98 $13.53 

Taxes 7.34 1.98 

Expenses 1.72 2.48 

Total expenses $9.06 $4.46 

Net profit 18.92 9.07 

It is stated, in connection with these statistics, that the 
rate of profit for land capital is 5.6 per cent for the paddy 
field, and 5.7 per cent for the upland field. This makes 
the valuation of the land about $338 and $159 per acre, 
respectively. A land holder who owns and rents ten 
acres of paddy field and ten acres of upland field would, 
at these rates, realize a net annual income of $279.90. 

Peasant farmers who own and work their lands receive 
per acre an income as follows : 

For paddy field. For upland field, 
per acre. per acre. 

Crop returns $.>'>. OO $30.72 

Taxes 7.34 1.98 

Labor and expenses 36.20 24.00 

Total expense $43. .'-i4 $25.98 

Net profit 11.46 4.74 

The peasant farmer who owns and works five acres, 2.5 
of paddy and 2.5 of upland field, would realize a total net 
income of $40.50. This is after deducting the price of 
his labor. With that included, his income would be some- 
thing like $91. 



Taxes and Rent. 429 

Tenant farmers who work some 41 per cent of the farm 
lands of Japan, would have accounts something as follows: 

For paddy field, For upland field, 
1 crop. 2 crops. 

per acre. per acre. 

Crop returns $49.03 ?78.62 $41.36 

Tenant lee 23.89 31.68 13.52 

Labor 15.78 25.79 14.69 

Fertllizatioa 7.82 17.30 10.22 

Seed 82 1.40 1.67 

Other expenses 1.69 2.82 1.66 

Total expenses $50.00 $78.89 $41.66 

Net profit —.97 —.27 —.30 

This statement indicates that tenant farmers do not real- 
ize enough from the crops to quite cover expenses and the 
price named for their labor. If the tenant were renting 
five acres, equally divided between paddy and upland field, 
the earning would be $73.00 or .$99.73 according as one 
or two crops are taken from the paddy field, this repre- 
senting what he realizes on his labor, his other expenses 
absorbing the balance of the crop value. 

But the average area tilled by each Japanese farmer's 
household is only 2.6 acres, hence the average earning of 
the tenant household would be $37.95 or $51.86. A clearer 
view of the difference in the present condition of farmers 
in Japan and of those in the United States may be gained 
by making the Japanese statement on the basis of our 
160-acre farm, as expressed in the table below: 

Tor paddy field. For upland field. Total. 

For 80 acres. For 80 acres. 160 acres. 

Crop returns $4,400.00 $2,457.60 $6,897.60 

Taxes $587.20 $168.40 f745.eo 

ExpenBCS 1,633.60 744.80 2,878.40 

Labor 1,262.40 1,175.20 2,437.60 

Total cost $3,488.20 $2,078 40 $5,6«1 60 

Net return 916.80 379.20 1.296.00 

Eetum Including labor 2,179.20 1,654.40 3,733.60 

In the United States the 160-acre farm is managed by 
and supports a single family, but in Japan, as the average 
household works but 2.6 acres, the earnings of the 160 
acres are distributed among some 61 household, making 



430 Return to Japan. 

the net return to each but $21.25, instead of $1296, and 
including the labor as earning, the income would be $39.96 
more, or $60.67 per household instead of $3733.60, the 
total for a 160-aere farm worked under Japanese condi- 
tions. 

These figures reveal something of the tense strain and 
of the terrible burden which is being carried by these 
people, over and above that required for the maintenance 
of the household. The tenant who raises one crop of 
rice pays a rental of $23.89 per acre. If he raises two 
crops he pays $31.58 ; if it is upland field, he pays $13.52. 
To these amounts he adds $10.33, $21.52 or $13.45 respect- 
ively for fertilizer, seed and other expenses, making a 
total investment of $34.22, $53.10 or $26.97 per acre, which 
would require as many bushels of wheat sold at a dollar 
a bushel to cover this cost. In addition to this he assumes 
all the risks of loss from weather, from insects and from 
blight, in the hope that he may recoup his expenses and 
in addition have for his services $14.81, $25.52 or $14.39 
for the season's work. 

The burdens of society, which have been and still are 
so largely burdens of war and of government, with all 
nations, are reflected with almost blinding effect in the 
land taxes of Japan, which range from $1.98, on the up- 
land, to $7.34 per acre on the paddy fields, making a 
quarter section, without buildings, carry a burden of $300 
to $1100 annually. Japan's budget in 1907 was 
$134,941,113, which is at the rate of $2.60 for each man, 
woman and child; $8.90 for each acre of cultivated land, 
and $23, for each household in the Empire. When such 
is the case it is not strange that scenes like Pig. 248 are 
common in Japan today where, after seventy years, toil 
may not cease. 

There is a bright, as well as a pathetic side to scenes 
like this. The two have shared for fifty years, but if the 
days have been full of toil, with them have come strength 
of body, of mind and sterling character. If the burdens 



Heavy Burdens. 



431 



have been heavy, each has made the other's lighter, the 
satisfaction fuller, the joys keener, the sorrows less diffi- 
cult to bear; and the children who came int« the home 
and have gone from it to perpetuate new ones, could not 




Pig. 248.— Alter seventy years, toil may not cease. 



well be other than such as to contribute to the foundations 
of nations of great strength and long endurance. 

Reference has been made to the large amount of work 
carried on in the farmers' households by the women and 
children, and by the men when they are not otherwise 
employed, and the earnings of this subsidiary work have 
materially helped to piece out the meagre income and 
to meet the relatively high taxes and rent. 



INDEX. 



Acidity of soils, 424. 

Acres per capita, V. S. 1 ; Orient, 1, 2, 
193, 410, 425. 

Afforestation, lul, 155, 156, 159, 398 ; 
tract, 217-220. 

Agricultural college, 381. 

Aichi. 41.3. 

Akashi Experiment Station, 22, 396. 

.Vmiir river, 351. 

Analysis, ashes, 207 ; compost, 211 ; ex- 
creta. 194; genya, 211; milk, 149; 
soil, 413. 

Angleworms, 205. 

Animal diet, 135. 

Antung, 358, 365. 

Area, cultivated land, 6, 425 ; per fam- 
ily, 425, 429 ; of gardens, 377 ; of 
rice paddies, 277. 

Area. Aichi, 414 ; Japan. 425 ; Nara. 
400: Shantung, 216: Shizuoka, 417; 
Tokushima, 417; Tokyo plain, 419. 

Area, forests. 160 : genya. 209 ; le- 
gumes, rice fields, 7, 8, 27, 271, 272 ; 
tea, 326; textiles, 164; wheat, 272; 
rush, 395. 

.ishes as fertilizer, 9, 68. 169, 182, 207, 
251, 2S6, 296. 380. 392. 410. 425. 

Astragalus sinicus, 10, 380. 



B 

Bags, of matting, 159, 165. 305, 
308, 359 ; paper, 396. 

Bamlioo, 62, 64, 127, 130, 132, 
138, 147, 157, 165, 188, 290, 293, 
385, 387, 388 ; sprouts, 131. 

Bananas, 82. 
2S 



306, 



133, 
301. 



Barley, 6, 53, 54, 226, 227, 242, 

272, 300. 309. 329, 362, 379, 410, 

423 ; tying stems, 206. 
Beans, 33, 122, 169, 213, 226, 255, 

:'.05, 309, 319, 329, 380, 422, 

sprouted, 134. 
Bean cakes, 257, 378, 392, 417 ; e: 

357, 358, 415. 
Bean curd, 143. 

Beauty of landscapes, 389-392, 400, 

409. 
Beds, chimney, 141, 142. 
Beef cattle, 418. 
Beggars, 121, 176. 
Bellows, 143. 
Bending wood, 89. 
Bibo, 396, 
Birds, 62. 

Blumann, Dr. John, 93, 96. 
Boats, 77, 78, 83, 86, 171. 
Bombyx mori, 319. 
Borrowing money, 152. 
Bound feet, 62, 122, 230. 
Bow, for whipping cotton, 127. 
Bow-brace. 87. 
Boxer uprising, 217. 
Braid, straw, 165, 226. 
Braziers, 138. 
Brick, 142, 143, 162, 163. 
Brick vaults. 50. 52. 
Bridge building, 299. 
Bucket and well sweep, 297, 299. 
Buckwheat, 359, 418, 423. 
Buffalo, water, 145, 149, 150, 235. 

336, 338. 
Buffalohom, nut, 134. 
Building materials, 160-163, 232, 

358, 337, 395. 



ZtJ7, 

422, 



290, 
423; 



port, 



405, 



285 



434 



Index 



Bullocks, 401, 402. 

Burdock, 31)6, 414. 

Bureau of Agriculture, Japan, 9, 428. 

Burial, 55, 56, 152. 

Butter, 150. 



Cabbage, 128, 129, 190, 268, 342, 343. 
Cakes, oil, 145-149, 190, 192, 257, 357, 

358, 378, 392. 
Calf, buffalo, 150. 
Calico printing, 121. 
Caltropes, 134. 
Camphor trees, 63. 
Canal, Grand, 99, 101, 104, 108. 
Canals, 90, 99-102, 107, 346 ; miles, 8, 

101. 
Canalization, 98-110, 338 ; suggested, 

273, 280. 
Canal mud, 9, 74, 79, 106, 167-174, 315, 

317 : compost, 181-189. 
Candleberry trees, 378. 
Canton, 5, 60. 72, 75, 78, 80, 198, 319. 
Canton Christian College, 51, 72, 75. 
Carpenter, 194. 

Carrying pole, 47, 59, 64, 121, 170, 200. 
Cart, 341, 401. 
Cash. 76. 

Caskets, 52, 53, 322. 
Cattle, 51, 135, 159, 233, 353, 355, 399, 

418; per acre, 2; per mile, 3. 
Catty, 76, 149, 150, 169, 255. 
Cemeteries, 25, 56. 
Chaff as fertilizer, 297. 
Chamberlln, Rollln T., 301, 303. 
Charcoal. 138-140, 159, 363, 402. 
Chart. Nara Exp't Station, 212. 
Chefoo, 236, 330. 
Chekianc, 98. 100. Ill, 113, 141, 284, 

300, 314, 315, 319. 
Chengtu, 101. 

Cherry trees, 402, 403, 405. 
Chestnut, water, 134. 
Chickens, 130 ; per mile, 3, 180. 
Chlhli, 53, 55, 143, 157, 161, 297, 331, 

342. 
Children, IS, 75, 330, 331, 344. 
Chimney beds, 142, 248. 



Chungming Island, 4, 61, 106. 

Chu Wei Yung, Mr., 224. 

Clay, 161. 

Clover. 10, 128, 13], 177, 182-189, 276, 

286, 293, 316, 380, 397, 413. 
Coal, 138, 158, 222, 223 ; loading, 40. 
Cocoons, 311, 314, 321, 322. 
Coins. 76. 

Cold storage, 77, 90, 343. 
College, 51, 72, 75, 381. 
Compost, 9, 10, 116, 181-189, 211-213, 
2.'::i, 243-245, 250-253, 269, 293, 338, 
378, 397 ; pits, 182-184, 248 ; stacks, 
182-189, 248-251, 269, 378, 380, 397, 
417. 
Compost house, 211-213, 248. 
Composting, 250-252, 261, 290. 
Confucius, 216. 

Conservation suggested, 273, 280. 
Cordwood, 363. 
Cotton, 6, .59, 61, 143, 262-266, 332; 

beating, 125. 
Cottonseed oil, 145-148 ; cake, 145-149. 
Cows, 149, 190, 284, 288, 341, 402. 
Crops, 226, 343, 353, 358, 362, 377, .396 ; 
number per year, 6, 90, 272, 343, 377. 
Crowding of gardens, 67, 343. 
Cucumbers, 35, 36, 203, 266, 398, 419. 
Cultivated land, Nara, 400 ; Tokushima, 

410. 
Cultivation, 239, 353, 362; rice, 292, 

293. 
Cultivators, 32, 293, 398. 
Curiosity, 176. 
Current wheel, 301, 303, 399. 



Daikuhara. Dr.. 210. 

Dairy. 149, 150. 

Dalny, 358. 

Dandola, 313. 

Delta, Hwang ho, 101 ; Sikiang, 82, 97, 

319; Yangtse, 50, 61, 99, 101. 
Density of population, 3, 48, 226, 228, 

233, 323. 
Dikes, 82, 83, 104, 108, 277, 412. 
Dipper, 188, 288. 
Donkeys, 122, 232, 233, 341, 353; per 

mile. 3, 226, 233. 



Index. 



435 



Drainacc. 109, 281, 338, 339, 419. 

rirains. In. 282. 

Dredge, 79, 187. 

Dred.^in^'. 7'.>. 188. 

Dress, 37, 75, 138, 140, 312, 355, 364, 

366. 
Drill. SO ; seed, 240, 248. 
Drousht. 230, 242, 341. 
Dry land rice, 271, 418, 419. 
Ducks, 83, 205. 
Dyeing, 124 
Dyes, 410. 

E 

Earnings, 134, 153. 203. 242. 306, 307. 
309, 311, 319. 329, 342-344. 377. 395. 

396, 417, 422, 428, 429. 
Economy, 234 : of diet, 135. 
Eggs, 180, 181, 233. 
Kg^rplants, 281. 282, 419. 
Elizabeth Blake Hospital, 120, 151. 
Erosion, 85, 97, 110. 112, 218, 229. 330, 

353, 388. 
Evans, Rev. E. A.. 152, 153. 253. 330. 

331, 332. 
Excreta, human. 193-199, 257. 
Experiment Stations. Japan, 211-213. 

307, 315. 376. 378. 381. 382-384. 387. 

397. 414. 424. 

Export, beans. 348. 357 : grain. 356 : 
silt, 311, 312. 321 : tea, 12. 326. 



Fannin;: mills. 304. 

Fanninir rice. 304. 306. 

Farm industries, 165, 306, 431. 

Farmors" families. 165. 419. 425, 427. 

Farmer in winter dress, 38, 140. 

Farms. 93, 233, 427. 

Feet, bound. 03, 122. 230. 

Fences, 157, 232. 

Fertilizers, commercial, 1, 296. 379, 392, 
396. 417. 

Fertilizers, 68, 73, 93. 142. 143, 161. 
167-175, 181-189, 193-215, 232, 285. 
.329. 338. 343, 377, 378. 379, 
400; canal mud, 9, 74, 79, 106, 167 
174; bean cake, 257, 378, 392, 417: 
removed by crops, 214, 215, 246. 255. 



Fertilization, 9, 74, 79, 81, 112, 116, 
107-189, 200. 207-215. 250-252, 254- 
256, 315, 329, 379, 413, 417, 423; 
compost, 181-189, 211, 213, 243, 245, 
250-252, 379, 417 ; with legumes, 10, 
106, 182-189, 250-259, 267, 293, 378, 
379, 397, 413 ; for fish ponds, 95. 

Figs, 415. 

Fireless cooker, 77. 

I'^ireworks, 253. 

Fish, 77, 95: culture, 93, 115, 213; 
Guano, 417. 

Flies, 78, 202. 

Floods, 104, 100-108, 109, 216, 338. 

Floors, 253. 

Floral statuary, 67. 

Flower stands, 409, 410. 

Food, 77, 121, 128-136, 177, 322, 379, 
418. 

Food transformers, 3, 135. 

Foot-power, 79, 298, 299, 302, 399. 

Forest, area. 160. 417; return, 218-220; 
growth, 151, 159. 362. 368: scanty, 



78, 399; 



14 : cutting, 151, 159, 

planting, 156. 
Foresters, 151, 159. 
Forest Garden, 217, 221. 
Fork, 89. 

Formosa, 6. 272, 427. 
Fowls per mile. 3, 180. 
Fruits, 343, 415. 
Fuel. 52, 86, 137-159, 221, 363, 368, 

378, 399, 402, 413, 414 : amount. 207. 
Fukuoka Exp't Station, 377, 381, 382- 

384, 387. 
Furnishing, 394, 395. 



Gardens. 15. 44. 66, 343. 398. 

Gardeners, 377, 409. 

Gas. natural, 138, 338, 

Geese, 51, 72, S3. 

Genge, 380. 

Genya. 209-211. 295. 296. 417, 425. 

(ierman works. 217, 236, 256. 

Ginger, 93, 398. 

Ginseng. 392. 

Goats, 51, 235, 353, 356. 

Go-downs, 77, 90. 



436 



Index. 



Gradinp, 112, 114, 277, 311, 320, 338, 
412, 413, 414. 

Grand Canal, 99, 103, 104, 108; sug- 
gested, 273. 

Grapes, 343. 

Grass, 157, 418 ; from canals, 295, 296. 

Graves, 48-59, 90, 236, 337, 346, 356; 
In Japan, 25: In China, 48-50, 72. 

Grave lands, 48-5!), 157, 235. 

Grazing, 51, 72, 235, 338, 353, 355, 356. 

Green manure, 9, 10, 52, 208-211, 213, 
274 286, 289, 295, 296, 309, 368, 377, 
378. 379, 380, 397, 413, 417, 418. 

Greens, 203, 266. 

Grinding, 122, 145, 363. 

Guilds, 120. 

Gutzlaff Island, 60. 



Haas, Mr., 217. 

Haden, Rev. R. A., 151, 177. 

Hakone village, 24. 

Hall, A. D., 194. 

Hangchow, 50, 99, 101. 

Hankow, 61. 101, 196. 

Hanyang, 61. 

Happy Valley, 62, 65. 

Harrison, Capt.. 15, 61. 

Harrow, 288, 289. 

Harvesting, 302, 341. 

Hats, 367. 

Hay, 336, 356. 

Health, 75. 323. 

Hedges, 342, 347, 414. 

Hills, herbage, 14, 85, 208-211, 218-220, 

295, 377, 378, 385. 
Hill lands, 51, 85, 151, 154-160, 218- 
220, 295, 385, 399, 404, 414, 418, 
419 ; area, 400, 411 ; for tea, 324. 
Hoe. 242. .340. 
Hoeing grain, 230, 242, 340, 347, 353. 

356. 
Hokkaido, 214, 271, 428. 
Holiday, 365. 

Holland, density of population, 2. 
Home, 141, 248, 285. 
Home industries, 165, 306, 396, 410. 
Honam Island, 51, 72. 
Hongkong, 60, 70. 



Honshu, 385. 

Hopkins, Dr. C. G., 134, 214, 358. 

Horses, 401, 402; per mile, 3; breeding, 

402, 403. 
Horticulture, 415. 
Hosie, Alexander, 138, 236, 271, 314. 

32R, 334, 335, 359. 
House building, 160-163. 
Houseboat. 83, 152-154, 176. 177, 235. 
Households, number, 165, 419. 
Hudson, Rev. W. H., 149. 
Human waste, 9, 19, 193-199, 257, 296, 

397. 
Hwang ho. 98, 101, 104, 107, 110. 
Hygiene, 198, 199, 323. 
Hyogo, 305-307. .397. 



Ichang, 101. 

Imperial Agr. Exp't Station, 423, 426. 

Imports, agricultural, 2. 

Incubator, 177. 

Indigo. 410, 411. 

Inland Sea, 40. 

Tnns. 142, 394, 400. 

Interest, 1.52, 153. 

International Concessions, wastes, 9, 53. 

Iris garden, 409. 

Irrigation, 7. 28-30, 35, 53, 54, 65, 79, 
83, 101. 112, 113, 189, 223. 226, 227, 
262, 274, 279, 280, 286, 288, 297-303, 
338, 399. 400, 419. 

Irrigation water, 211, 280, 400. 

Island of Chungraing, 4, 61, 106. 



.Tinricksha, 15, 118. 

.Tohnson, Margaret, quoted, 395. 

Journey, A bit of, 387-389. 

K 

Kaiping, 347. 

Kang, 141-143, 248, 261, 338. 

Kaoliang, 157, 15s, 161-163, 232, 255. 

268, 346, 353, 359. 
Karafuto, 272. 
Hashing, 99. 150, 163. 
Kawaguchi, Dr., 104, 211, 296. 



Index. 



437 



Kellner, 193, 194. 
Kiariirsi. lOo, 331. 
Kiangsu, 100, 113. 

woman, 140. 
Kiaochow, 1.^>S, -21, 
Kilns. 86, 143, 163, 164. 
Kirin, 351. 
Kittysols. 85. 

Kiyomizu temple, 404-409. 
Kobe, 37 ; waste. 397. 
Korea, 365-374. 151, 159. 271. 312. 
Korean rice fields, 29, 272. 
Kowloon, 62. 
Kiinshan, 167. 
Kweichow, 321. 
Kyoto. 4o:-;-4')0 : 
Kyushu, 377. 



300, 316. 319, 331 



222 ; bay, 216, 



180. 



experiment station. 401. 



10.;. 100. 110, 



Laborers, 16, 120, 236. 285. 344. 

356, 359. 
Lakes, 104, 412. 
Lake Biwa, 412. 
Tvaunbuilding. 60, 

330. 
Land owners, 427. 
Lanr)«c.ipe artists, 40.", 400. 
Lands reclaimable, 42.5. 
Land values, 332. 377, 428. 
Lantern, 223, 224. 
Leaching, 281, 283, 
r.eas-uo. Re\-. T. .1.. 234. 245. 
Leeks, 74. 

Le^nimes. 10. 213. 348. 380. 
Levees. 102 108. 412. 414. 
Lewell. .Tud^e Samuel. 252. 
Liao. 321. 351. 357. 362. 
Lime. 143, 173, 207, 208, 397 

coffins, 55 : kilns, 143. 
rJmestone, supplied to rice fields, 280. 
Liquid manure, 68, 74, 193-205, 26: 

397. 401. 
Lost, 223. 

Lotus, 133, 377, 414; roots, 132, 133. 
Lumber, sawing, 63. 
Lunches, 76, 121, 374. 
Lwan ho 346. 
Lwanchow, .348. 



413 



M 

Macaroni. 418. 

Maize, 268, 347, 348, 353, 359, 367, 418. 

Manchuria, 142, 157, 159, 161. 236, 345, 

348, 350-363 ; fertilization, 10, 347, 

3rn3. 

Manchu headdress. 361. 

Manufacturers. 143, 145, 165. 305. 306. 

333. 396. 411. 
Manure, 200 ; human, 73, 194-199, 257, 

397, 401 ; liquid, 68, 74, 193-205, 265, 

397 ; receptacles, 70, 199, 201, 257. 

401 ; silkworms. 200, 
Manure, green, 208-211, 286. 289, 295, 

309, 377, 379, 380, 397. 400. 411. 413. 

417, 418. 
Maps, 98, 100, 102, 196. 273; soils, 424. 
Markets, 128-134, 146, 233. 
Marmalades, 415. 
Matches. 59. 236. 
Mattress makinc. 125. 
Matting. 87. 159. 164. 359, 392-306; 

rush. 87. 88. 389. 392-395. 
Melons. 2S2. 309. 
Merrill. 280. 

Meyermanns. Dr. B.. 228. 
Milk, water buflalo. 149. 150. 
Mill. 123. 145. --'^.t;. 413. 
Millet. 7. 8. 157. 161. 226. 255. 268. 

342. 346. 349. 353. 356. 358. 359. 360. 

362. 367. 422. 
Mississippi. 110. 
^ritsumata. 164. 
Mo^i. 40. 

;Money. 76 : paper. 55. 
Monuments. 362. 
"^Mother of Petre." 252. 
Mow. 254. 
Mud as fertilizer, 9, 74, 79, 85, 93, 106, 

107-17-). 1S2-18H, 315. 317. 
Mukden. 5. 158, 159, 345, 348, 350, 359, 

360, 362. 
Mulberry. 79. 83-85. 164. 170-173, 200, 

311, 315-319. 332, 412, 414, 418, 419; 

leaves, 311, 313-319, 
Mulberry, paper, 164. 
Mules, 348, 355. 
Multiple cropping. 11. 263-270, 274, 349, 

360, 396. 
Mushrooms, 159. 



438 



Index. 



N 

Nagasaki, 42. 48, 376, 377. 

Nasoya Exp't Station. 31.5, 413. 

Nanldug, 99, 139, 167, 316. 

Nara Exp't Station, 211-213, 307, .397 

400. 
Netting, 306. 

Newchwang, 236, 321, 356, 357, 358. 
Newspapers, 167. 
New Wi.iu, ,365. 
Niglit soil, 9, 19, 42, 68, 70, 194-200. 

37!l, 397, 401. 
Nitre-farraing. 252. 
Nitrification, 251-254. 
Nitrogen, 143, 169; In excreta. 194: 

supplied, 211, 214, 215, 2.59, 280, 295, 

37,'i, 379, 400, 413; removed, 214, 215. 

245, 255 ; lack, 357, 358. 
Nursery, 156. 
Nursery beds, rice, 11, 284-289. 385. 



O 



Oaks, 159, 319, 321, 368. 

Oats. 362. 367. 

Official, Chinese. 355. 

Oils, 143, 145, 190. 256, 257. cakes. 145- 

3 49. 190. 257, 379. 
Onions. .343. 
Ono, Professor, 22, 396. 
Opium. 245. 
Oranges. 150, 417. 
Osaka, 37. 



Packing cases, 165. 

Paddies, 7, 276-278. 

Paddy fields, returns and expenses, 428. 
4 29. 

Paper materials. 164; bags, 23; mul- 
berry, 164. 

Parker, Edward C, 358. 

Parking, 400. 405, 407. 

Paton, 313, 314. 

Peaches, 415 ; orchard, 34, 35, 417. 

Peak, Hongkong, 62. 

Peanuts, 226. 256, 420, 422. 



I'ear orchard, 21-23, 31, 33, 417. 
Pears, 343, 396, 415. 
Peas, 90, 92 ; sprouted, 134. 
Pei ho, 53, 330. 
Peking, 239, 346. 
Perry, Commodore, 15. 
Phosphorus, in excreta, 194, 197 ; In 
river water, 197 : supplied, 74, 112, 
143, 207, 211-215, 259, 280, 295, 378, 
379. 400. 413. removed, 214, 215, 246. 
2.55, 358. 
Pile driving, 17, 118. 
I'ine boughs. 86, 151, 155, 221, 414. 
Pine nursery. 156. 
IMne. umbrella, 414. 
Pirates, 81. 

Plastering, 101-163. 243, 252, 337. 
Plow. 225. 385. 386. 
Plowing, 93, 190, 191, 224, 284, 378. 
Police, 70, 224. 
Polishing rice, 304, 307. 
Pongee. 321. 

Population, coimtry village, 27 : Japan, 
?. 425: Manchuria. ;;51 ; .\ichi. 414; 
Nara, 400 ; Shizuoka, 417 ; Toku- 
shima. 410; urban and rural, 427; In- 
crease. 425 ; density, 2, 3, 4, 48, 226, 
228, 233, 323; Shantung, 216; Tsit- 
sihar, 351. 
Potassium, in excreta. 194 ; in floors, 
251: removed, 214, 215, 246, 255. 358: 
supplied. 74. 112. 143. 207, 211-215. 
259. 280. 378. 379, 400, 413 ; in river 
water. 197. 
Potatoes, 6, 206, 343, 377, 422. See 

sweet potatoes. 
Poultry. 180: per mile, 3, 180. 
Poyang lake, 104. 
Press. 139, 148. 

Prices. 76. 78, 93. 118. 129-131. 134, 
145, 150, 152, 153, 158, 159. 167, 169, 
176. ISO, 192, 225, 233, 255. 316, 381. 
385. 397, 399. 
Prince Ching. .39. 
Prizes. 3S0. 397. 
Pruning. 316-319, 328. 
Pump. 221, 284-288, 297-299, 333. 
Pumping. 284-286, 399. 
Putai, 106. 



Index. 



439 



fanning, 
polishing. 



E 



Railroads, ,162. 

Raincoats, 15. 

Rain hats. 85. 

Rainy-day shoes. 17. 

Rainfall, 6, 117, 226, 228, 268, 345, 

Rake, 157. 

Rape, 6, 128, 143, 190, 192, 268, 

319, 380, 422. 
Readjustment of land, 31. 
Receptacles for waste, 70, 199, 201, 
Reforestation tract, 217-220. 
Rent. 200, 342, 428, 430, 
Renters, 427, 429. 
Reservoirs, 104, 113, 115, 167, 400. 
Rice. 6. 7. 31. 61, 82. 90, 271-310, 

377, 379, 380, 385, 400, 411, 414, 

417 ; preparing for, 189-191 ; 

Slimed. 271 ; produced, 272 ; seed 

284-289, 385. 
Rice chaff. 148. 297. 
Rice culture, 271-310 

306 : harvesting, 302 

.■!07 ; threshing, 302. 
Rice fields. 387. 388. 389, 390, 391, 

412, 414, 415: area, 27, 103, 
271 ; weeds, 385. 

Rice paddies, 28-31, 276, 277, 385, 

413, 417. 

Rice straw. 30.5. 306. 

Richard. 311. 326. 

Richardson, 241. 

Ricksha, 15, 118, 223, 256, 260. 

Ridging, 73, 93, 95, 113, 349, 353, 

Roads, 222, 236-2.39, 256, 339, 385, 

in Japan, 31, 388. 
Roofs, 160-162. 
Rondot, 321. 
Rooting slips, 332. 
Roots, wheat, 269. 
Rose, white, 352 ; yellow, 221, 
Ross. Prof. K. A., 234, 277. 
Rotation, of crops, 309, 380, 412 

soil, 173. 
Rotharasted experiments, 135. 
Run-off, 7, 211, 274, 279. 
Rush, 87. 88, 380, 392-395. 
Rye, 367. 



338, 

415. 
con- 
bed, 



304, 
304, 



398, 
105. 



388, 



354. 
388: 



; of 



Saddle. Korean, 159. 

Saline deposits, 110. 

Saline districts, 337, 338, 346. 

Salt, 138, 332-337, 338, 346, 355, 377, 
o!)3. 

Salted cabbage, 128, 120, 190, 268. 

Samshui, 84, 90, 91. 

Sandals, 307. 

Sanitation, 12, 75, 77, 78, 198-199, 323. 

Sapporo, 376. 

Sawing, 63. 

Scales, 130, 147. 

Scidmore, Consul-deneral, 376. 

Scott, Rev. ^Y. H., 217, 224. 

Seal on goods, 222, 244. 

Searchlight, 72. 

Sea wall, 104. 

Seaweed, 19-21. 

Sediments, 97, 100, 110. 

Seed drill, 240, 247. 

Seoul, 368. 

Servants, 119, 234. 

Sewage. 19, 194-199, 397, 401. 

Sewing circle, 120. 

Sewing machine, 64. 

Sb.anghai. .54. 106. 118, 120, 121, 128, 
149, 157, 170, 181, 194-196, 198; sale 
of wastes, 9. 
Shanhaikwan, 347, 349. 

Shantung, 53, 54, 100, 107, 116, 140, 
143. 151, 157. 216-260, 321, 331, 358; 
population density, S, 216, 226 ; boy, 
260 : laborers, 353 ; crops per year, 6 ; 
rainfall, 7, 226, 228. 
Sheep. 51. 135. 235 ; per mile, 3. 
Shells, 174, 175. 
Shoes, rainy-day, 17. 
Shops, 25. 

Shimonosekl, 40, 385. 
Ship building, 351. 
Shizuoka E:sp't station, 415, 416. 
Shrimp, 175. 
Sickle, 302. 
Sikiang, 72, 81-96. 

Silk. 311-322 ; amount, 12, 164, 311, 
312 : worms, 313, 314, 319-322, 368. 
Silk culture, 11, 311-322, 414; waste, 
200. 



440 



Index. 



Silk worms, wild, ."519-322, 368. 

Silk, wild, 319. 

Size of rice paddies, 277. 

Slippers, 307. 

Smoking, 90, 148, 245-247. 

Snails. 175. 

Soil survey, 424. 

Soldiers, 334, 355. 

Soocliow, 151. 

Soot, 143. 

Sorghum, 157, 161-164, 358. 

Soy heans. 31, 122, 213, 226, 255, 250 

268, 309, 341, 342, 379. 
Spading, 205. 
Sphere of Influence, 217. 
Sprouted beans and peas, 134. 
Squash, 419. 
Staging, 64. 

Stanley, Dr. Arthur, 149, 198. 
Statuary, floral, 67. 
Steaming. 147. 

Stem fuel, 138, 143-146, 157, 158, 413. 
Stools, 290. 
Stove, 234. 

Str.-iw, 93, 143, 144, 148, 160, 161, 220. 
255, 283, 296, 305, 306, 327, 342. 385. 
412; as mulch, 23, 112, 327, 377, 412. 
421 ; as fertilizer, 385, 422. 
Straw braid, 165, 226. 
Streets, 42, 63, 249, 250, 339. 
Subsidies. 380, 397. 
Subsoils, 261, 413. 
Sugar cane, 83. 
Sulphur, supplied, 280. ■ 
Sungarl, 351. 
Superphosphate, 379. 
Sweet potatoes, 61, 226, 229, 377, 419, 

420. 
Swine, 70, 135, 233, 353 ; per mile, 3. 
Swing day, 365. 
Swinging basket, 297, 298. 
Szechwan, 138, 271, 301, 312, 314, 321, 
326, 334-337. 



Talping rebellion, 284. 
Taku, 332, 339. 
Tally sticks, 77, 78. 
Taro, 282, 283, 398. 



Taxes, 31, 331, 350, 428, 429, 430. 

Tea, 12, 77, 112, 143, 147, 165, 177, 323- 
329. 412, 415, 418. 

Teams, 232, 341, 354. 

Temperature, Manchuria, 345. 

Temple, 404-409. 

Tenants, 427. 429 

Terraces, 45, 46, 70, 105, 277, 278, 279, 
363, 376, 388, 390, 391, 417, 418. 

Textiles, 164. 

Thatching, 31, 331, 350, 428, 429, 430. 

Thery, Edmond, 350. 

Threshing, 302. 

Tibet, 326. 

Tientsin, 330-344, 345 ; crops, 6. 

Tile, 161. 

Time economizing. 201-209, 288. 

Tobacco, 121, 245-247, 415, 419. 

Tokito, Professor, 22, 375, 405. 

Tokushlma, 410, 411. 

Tokyo, Ifis: plain. 419. 420. 

Transplanting, 11, 229, 282, 284, 288- 

203, 346, 354, 410. 
Trellises, cucumbers, 30, 203; pears, 21. 
Trenching, 117, 342. 
Tsinan, 107, 222-224. 
Tsingtao, 151, 210. 221, 227-228, 233 

330. 
Tungting lake, 104. 
Tussur silkworms, 319-322, 368. 
Typhoon, 61. 
Tzeliutsing, 335-337. 

U 

Utilization of waste, 193-207, 232, 251, 
257, 269, 280. 



Vegetables, 42, 44, 90, 128, 129, 282, 
30U, 320, 342, 377, .398, 414, 418, 41o! 
Vegetarians, 134. 
Vehicles, 230, 238, 341, 361. 
Villages, crowded, 20, 27, 249, 339. 
Violets, 37. 

W 

Wages, 93, 118, 120, 154, 169, 218, 2.34, 

285, 332, 344, 
Wall, Chinese, 349, 351. 



Index. 



44] 



War, cost, 350. 

Warming, 138, 142. 

Washington, Booker T., 198. 

Waste, TUilization, 19.S-20T. 232, 251, 

2ri7. 2ai», 280. 
Water, per ton of crop, 7 ; supply, 69 : 

for transplanting, 229, 230. 
Water buffalo, 52, 145, 149, 235, 33S. 
\A'.iter caltropes, 134. 
Water chestnuts, 134. 
Water grass, 134. 
Watermelons, 282, 283; seeds, 175. 
Waterwheel, 301, 303, 363, 411. 
Weaving, 124. 
We»ds, 385. 
Weeders, 398. 
Weeding, 293, 388, 398. 
Weed and pasture land, 209-211, 295, 

296. 417, 425. 
Weihaiwei, 217, 
Weihsien, 222, 223. 
Wells, 223, 226-228 ; salt, 138. 
West river, 82-95. 
Wheat, 61, 223, 230, 236, 240, 241, 255, 

263-269, 272, 285, 290, 313, 341, 342, 

343. 346, 348, 359, 362, 367, 380. 

400, 422 : fertilizers removed by, 214- 

215. 
Wheelbarrow, 59, 119. 128, 239; men, 

59, 2.36. 



E. T., 331 



^Vhi].>pini■ eotton, 126. 

Whitewash, 222. 

Wiju, 365. 

Wilder, -\nios P., 72. 

Wild silli. :!19-322. 

Williams, Consul-General 

343, 344. 
Windbreaks, 330, 342, 347. 
Windmills. 332, 333, 335, 346, 355. 
Winter crops, 37, 90, 290. 380. 
\Vinter dress, 37, 38, 39. 90. 13S. 140. 
Wolff, 193, J94. 

Women, 63, 75, 248; gleaning, 340. 
Wood, 15S. 159, 389. 
Woosung, 48. 

Wu. Mrs., 141, 201, 248, 284-288. 
Wuchow, SI, 82, 87. 



Yalu, 321, 365. 

Vangtse, 48, 50, 60, 97, 101, 104. 

Yellow river, 216, 330. 

Yellow rose, 221. 

Yields, 134, 160, 231, 233, 241, 242. 
254, 255, 264, 271, 285, 306, 309, 314. 
315, 319, 326, 329, 341, 343, 359, 360, 
379, 380, 393, 397, 413, 417, 422, 

Yokohama, 15, 138, 198. 

Yu, The Great. 107, 108, 216. 



WORKS OF F. H. KING 

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
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