ions of China seem to have maintained their fecundity for over four
thousand years, entirely through the thoughtful care of the peasantry in
restoring to the soil, under another form, all that the crops have taken
from it. The plowing of the Chinese is very poor. They scarcely do more
than scratch the surface of the ground with their bent-stick plows,
wooden-tooth drills, and wicker-work harrows; and instead of straight
lines, so dear to the eye of a Western farmer, the ridges and furrows are
as crooked as serpents. The real secret of their success seems to lie in
the care they take to replenish the soil. All the sewage of the towns is
carried out every morning at daybreak by special coolies, to be preserved
for manure; while the dried herbs, straw, roots, and other vegetable
refuse, are economized with the greatest care for fuel. The Chinese
peasant offsets the rudeness of his implements with manual skill. He weeds
the ground so carefully that there is scarcely a leaf above the ground
that does not appertain to the crop. All kinds of pumps and hydraulic
wheels are worked, either by the hand, animals, or the wind. The system of
tillage, therefore, resembles market-gardening rather than the broad
method of cultivation common in Europe and America. The land is too
valuable to be devoted to pasture, and the forests nearly everywhere have
been sacrificed to tillage to such an extent that the material for the
enormously thick native coffins has now to be imported from abroad.

Streams and irrigating-ditches were so frequent that we were continually
saturated with water or covered with mud. Our bare arms and legs were so
tanned and coated that we were once asked by a group of squalid villagers
if "foreigners" ever bathed like themselves. On dashing down into a
village, we would produce consternation or fright, especially among the
women and children, but after the first onset, giggling would generally
follow, for our appearance, especially from the rear, seemed to strike
them as extremely ridiculous. The wheel itself presented various aspects
to their ignorant fancies. It was called the "flying machine" and
"foot-going carriage," while some even took it for the "fire-wheel cart,"
or locomotive, about which they had heard only the vaguest rumors. Their
ignorance of its source of motive power often prompted them to name it the
"self-moving cart," just as the natives of Shanghai are wont to call the
electric-light "the self-coming