Farmers of Forty Centuries Part 3

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

The mechanical appliances in use on the ca.n.a.ls and in the shops of Canton demonstrate that the Chinese possess constructive ability of a high order, notwithstanding so many of these are of the simplest forms. This statement is well ill.u.s.trated 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 pa.s.senger boats, capable of carrying thirty to one hundred people, propelled by the same foot-power but laid crosswise of the stern, the men working in long single or double lines, depending on the size of the boat. On these the fare was one cent, gold, for a fifteen mile journey, a rate one-thirtieth our two-cent railway tariff. The dredging and clearing of the ca.n.a.ls and water channels in and about Canton is likewise accomplished with the same foot-power, often by families living on the dredge boats. A dipper dredge is used, constructed of strong bamboo strips woven into the form of a sliding, two-horse road sc.r.a.per, guided by a long bamboo handle. The dredge is drawn along the bottom by a rope winding about the projecting axle of the foot-power, propelled by three or more people. When the dipper reaches the axle and is raised from the water it is swung aboard, emptied and returned by means of a long arm like the old well sweep, operated by a cord depending from the lower end of the lever, the dipper swinging from the other. Much of the mud so collected from the ca.n.a.ls and channels of the city is taken to the rice and mulberry fields, many square miles of which occupy the surrounding country. Thus the channels are kept open, the fields grow steadily higher above flood level, while their productive power is maintained by the plant food and organic matter carried in the sediment.

The mechanical principle involved in the boy's b.u.t.ton buzz was applied in Canton and in many other places for operating small drills as well as in grinding and polis.h.i.+ng appliances used in the manufacture of ornamental ware. The drill, as used for boring metal, is set in a straight shaft, often of bamboo, on the upper end of which is mounted a circular weight. The drill is driven by a pair of strings with one end attached just beneath the momentum weight and the other fastened at the ends of a cross hand-bar, having a hole at its center through which the shaft carrying the drill pa.s.ses.

Holding the drill in position for work and turning the shaft, the two cords are wrapped about it in such a manner that simple downward pressure on the hand bar held in the two hands unwinds the cords and thus revolves the drill. Relieving the pressure at the proper time permits the momentum of the revolving weight to rewind the cords and the next downward pressure brings the drill again into service.

IV

UP THE SI-KIANG, WEST RIVER

On the morning of March 10th we took pa.s.sage on the Nanning for Wuchow, in Kw.a.n.gsi province, a journey of 220 miles up the West river, or Sikiang. The Nanning is one of two English steamers making regular trips between the two places, and it was the sister boat which in the summer of 1906 was attacked by pirates on one of her trips and all of the officers and first cla.s.s pa.s.sengers killed while at dinner. The cause of this attack, it is said, or the excuse for it, was threatened famine resulting from destructive floods which had ruined the rice and mulberry crops of the great delta region and had prevented the carrying of manure and bean cake as fertilizers to the tea fields in the hill lands beyond, thus bringing ruin to three of the great staple crops of the region. To avoid the recurrence of such tragedies the first cla.s.s quarters on the Nanning had been separated from the rest of the s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.senger coaches. Both British and Chinese gunboats were patrolling the river; all Chinese pa.s.sengers were searched for concealed weapons as they came aboard, even though Government soldiers, and all arms taken into custody until the end of the journey. Several of the large Chinese merchant junks which were pa.s.sed, carrying valuable cargoes on the river, were armed with small cannon and when riding by rail from Canton to Sam Shui, a government pirate detective was in our coach.

The Sikiang is one of the great rivers of China and indeed of the world. Its width at Wuchow at low water was nearly a mile and our steamer anch.o.r.ed in twenty-four feet of water to a floating dock made fast by huge iron chains reaching three hundred feet up the slope to the city proper, thus providing for a rise of twenty-six feet in the river at its flood stage during the rainy season. In a narrow section of river where it winds through Shui Hing gorge, the water at low stage has a depth of more than twenty-five fathoms, too deep for anchorage, so in times of prospective fog, boats wait for clearing weather. Fluctuations in the height of the river limit vessels pa.s.sing 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 ca.n.a.lized, diked, drained and converted into the most productive of fields, bearing three or more crops each year. As we pa.s.sed westward through this delta region the broad flat fields, surrounded by dikes to protect them against high water, were being plowed and fitted for the coming crop of rice. In many places the dikes which checked off the fields were planted with bananas and in the distance gave the appearance of extensive orchards completely occupying the ground.

Except for the water and the dikes it was easy to imagine that we were traversing one of our western prairie sections in the early spring, at seeding time, the scattered farm villages here easily suggested distant farmsteads; but a nearer approach to the houses showed that the roofs and sides were thatched with rice straw and stacks were very numerous about the buildings. Many tide gates were set in the dikes, often with double trunks.

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

Much of the way this water-course was too broad to permit detailed study of field conditions and crops, even with a gla.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed two men in a boat, in charge of a huge flock of some hundreds of yellow ducklings. Anch.o.r.ed 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 const.i.tuted the floating home of the ducks. Both ducks and geese are reared in this manner in large numbers by the river population. When it is desired to move to another feeding ground a gang plank is put ash.o.r.e and the flock come on board to remain for the night or to be landed at another place.

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

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

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

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

Throughout the hill-land section of this mighty river the most characteristic and persistent human features were the stacks of brush-wood and the piles of stove wood along the banks or loaded upon boats and barges for the market. The brush-wood was largely made from the boughs of pine, tied into bundles and stacked like grain. The stove wood was usually round, peeled and made from the limbs and trunks of trees two to five inches in diameter. All this fuel was coming to the river from the back country, sent down along steep slides which in the distance resemble paths leading over hills but too steep for travel. The fuel was loaded upon large barges, the boughs in the form of stacks to shed rain but with a tunnel leading into the house of the boat about which they were stacked, while the wood was similarly corded about the dwelling, as seen in Fig. 44.

The wood was going to Canton and other delta cities while the pine boughs were taken to the lime and cement kilns, many of which were located along the river. Absolutely the whole tree, including the roots and the needles, is saved and burned; no waste is permitted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Through Dr. John Blumann of the missionary hospital at Tungkun, east from Canton, we learned that the good rice lands there a few years ago sold at $75 to $130 per acre but that prices are rising rapidly.

The holdings of the better cla.s.s of farmers there are ten to fifteen mow--one and two-thirds to two and a half acres--upon which are maintained families numbering six to twelve. The day's wage of a carpenter or mason is eleven to thirteen cents of our currency, and board is not included, but a day's ration for a laboring man is counted worth fifteen cents, Mexican, or less than seven cents, gold.

Fish culture is practiced in both deep and shallow basins, the deep permanent ones renting as high as $30 gold, per acre. The shallow basins which can be drained in the dry season are used for fish only during the rainy period, being later drained and planted to some crop. The permanent basins have often come to be ten or twelve feet deep, increasing with long usage, for they are periodically drained by pumping and the foot or two of mud which has acc.u.mulated, removed and sold as fertilizer to planters of rice and other crops. It is a common practice, too, among the fish growers, to fertilize the ponds, and in case a foot path leads alongside, screens are built over the water to provide accommodation for travelers. Fish reared in the better fertilized ponds bring a higher price in the market.

The fertilizing of the water favors a stronger growth of food forms, both plant and animal, upon which the fish live and they are better nourished, making a more rapid growth, giving their flesh better qualities, as is the case with well fed animals.

In the markets where fish are exposed for sale they are often sliced in halves lengthwise and the cut surface smeared with fresh blood.

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

V

EXTENT OF Ca.n.a.lIZATION AND SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS

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

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

It is well nigh impossible, by word or map, to convey an adequate idea of the magnitude of the systems of ca.n.a.lization and delta and other lowland reclamation work, or of the extent of surface fitting of fields which have been effected in China, Korea and j.a.pan through the many centuries, and which are still in progress. The lands so reclaimed and fitted const.i.tute their most enduring a.s.set and they support their densest populations. In one of our journeys by houseboat on the delta ca.n.a.ls between Shanghai and Hangchow, in China, over a distance of 117 miles, we made a careful record of the number and dimensions of lateral ca.n.a.ls entering and leaving the main one along which our boat-train was traveling. This record shows that in 62 miles, beginning north of Kas.h.i.+ng and extending south to Hangchow, there entered from the west 134 and there left on the coast side 190 ca.n.a.ls. The average width of these ca.n.a.ls, measured along the water line, we estimated at 22 and 19 feet respectively on the two sides. The height of the fields above the water level ranged from four to twelve feet, during the April and May stage of water.

The depth of water, after we entered the Grand Ca.n.a.l, often exceeded six feet and our best judgment would place the average depth of all ca.n.a.ls 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 ca.n.a.ls, but scarcely more than one-third of those present are shown on the map. Between A, where we began our records, before reaching Kas.h.i.+ng, and B, near the left margin of the map, there were forty-three ca.n.a.ls leading in from the up-country side, instead of the eight shown, and on the coast side there were eighty-six leading water out into the delta plain toward the coast, instead of the twelve shown. Again, on one of our trips by rail, from Shanghai to Nanking, we made a similar record of the number of ca.n.a.ls seen from the train, close along the track, and the notes show, in a distance of 162 miles, 593 ca.n.a.ls between Lungtan and Nansiang. This is an average of more than three ca.n.a.ls per mile for this region and that between Shanghai and Hangchow.

The extent, nature and purpose of these vast systems of internal improvement may be better realized through a study of the next two sketch maps. The first, Fig. 52, represents an area 175 by 160 miles, of which the last ill.u.s.tration is the portion enclosed in the small rectangle. On this area there are shown 2,700 miles of ca.n.a.ls and only about one-third of the ca.n.a.ls shown in Fig. 51 are laid down on this map, and according to our personal observations there are three times as many ca.n.a.ls as are shown on the map of which Fig.

51 represents a part. It is probable, therefore, that there exists today in the area of Fig. 52 not less than 25,000 miles of ca.n.a.ls.

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

The location, in this vast low delta and coastal plain, of the system of ca.n.a.ls 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 Ca.n.a.l which has a length of more than eight hundred miles. The plain, east of this ca.n.a.l, as far north as the mouth of the Hw.a.n.g ho in 1852, is ca.n.a.lized 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 ca.n.a.l and the coast. Westward, up the Yangtse valley, the provinces of Anhwei, Kiangsi, Hunan and Hupeh have very extensive ca.n.a.lized tracts, probably exceeding 28,000 square miles in area, and Figs. 54 and 55 are two views in this more western region. Still further west, in Szechwan province, is the Chengtu plain, thirty by seventy miles, with what has been called "the most remarkable irrigation system in China."