34

SKILL OF THE HUSBANDMAN,

Almost every individual met with, in the paths and fields, is provided with a basket and a rake; and every evening, the cottager brings home a certain quantity to add to the mest heap, which is a most important appendage to every dwelling. Having but few sheep and cattle, they are obliged to make the most of the stercoraceous stock of men and swine. This is carefully collected, and actually sold at so much per pound, while whole strings of city scavengers may be seen cheerily posting into the country, every successive morning, with their envied acquisitions; little heeding the olfactory nerves of the less interested passengers. Every other substance likely to answer the end, is anxiously collected, and carefully disposed, so as to provide for future exigences; such as decayed animal and vegetable matter, the sweeping of streets, the mud of canals, burnt bones, lime; and, what is not a little singular, the short stumpy human hair, shaven from millions of heads, every ten days, is industriously gathered up, and sold for manure throughout the empire. In the high importance placed on stercoration, in China, we see an illustration of that passage in II. Kings, vi. 25, that when there was a great famine in Samaria, “the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung was sold for five pieces of silver.'

The skill of the Chinese husbandman is also manifested in the arrangement and irrigation of his rice lands. In the centre and south of China rice is the staple commodity; and it is well known that rice will not thrive unless supplied with water. From the preparing of the ground for the seed, almost to the reaping of the harvest, the rice fields must be overspread with water. In order to this, each field is made perfectly level, with an

elevated ridge or border, and a stream of water constantly flowing into it, to provide against the loss by evaporation, and to yield an overplus for the fields around and beneath it. For this purpose water must either be raised by artificial means, such as pumps, levers, wheels, &c., from a lower to a higher region; or conducted with great skill and care from some elevated position, along the sides of hills, and across vallies, to the desired spot; where, introduced into the highest field of the series, it gradually flows down to the lower terraces, until it is lost in the river or the sea. The very ingenious methods which the Chinese employ for raising water have often been illustrated; and shew at once their adroitness, and the necessity which has thus driven them to their wits ends, to increase the produce of their soil. The water brought over the land, brings fertility along with it, and the debris accompanying the fluid thus conveyed from the surrounding heights, tends alike to moisten and fructify the soil. The Chinese may be considered adepts in terrace cultivation, notwithstanding the observations of Barrow, that he saw but few instances of it in his route. From all the information that can be gathered from the natives, the contrary is the fact; and though in places where a supply of water cannot be commanded at an elevated spot, the natives necessarily leave the hills uncut into terraces; yet in every instance in which the locality is favourable, they do not fail to adopt a mode of cultivation so essential to the production of rice in southern latitudes. All travellers agree in the opinion that in minute spade husbandry, the Chinese more than equal Europeans; and Lord Macartney denominates them the best husbandmen in the world. The activity

36

ECONOMY OF THE CHINESE.

and acuteness of the Chinese husbandman, therefore, tend to shew, that so much energy and mind have been necessarily called into display by an overflowing population.

Not less remarkable, nor less available to our argument, is the economy observed by the Chinese in the use of the necessaries of life, in order that they may make them go as far as possible. This is apparent in their food, their dress, and their dwellings; in all of which they avoid extravagance, and restrict themselves to such kinds as need the smallest quantity of ground to produce and rear them. It is not meant by this, that the Chinese are not fond of good food, and plenty of it, when they can get it; they are, in fact, both epicures and gormands, when good things fall in their way; but they manage to do with little and coarse food, when necessity compels them, which is, alas! but too often. The diet of a Chinese is generally a little rice and salt fish, or salted vegetable; a species of brassica being commonly used for this purpose, which being thoroughly impregnated with salt, helps to flavour the insipid rice, and enables them to relish their food. This mess is sometimes varied by certain preparations of pulse or millet, and more rarely a few ounces of pork are stewed down. with the vegetable preparations, in the proportion of one to five. The common food of the poor, however, is sweet potatoes or yams, with occasionally a little rice boiled in a large quantity of water; and once a month, it may be, a pork meal, or on grand festive occasions, a little poultry. Against the eating of beef they have a strong prejudice, not so much on account of religious scruples, as because oxen are used in husbandry, and they think it a shame, after a poor animal has been labouring all

LITTLE ANIMAL FOOD.

37

his life in their service, to cut him to pieces at last, and then to feed upon his flesh, and make shoes of his hide. Hence in the hortatory tracts, which they sometimes publish, they draw the figure of an ox, composed entirely of words or characters, which set forth the complaint of the cow kind, relative to their hard usage during life, and their still harder fate at death, concluding by assigning the lowest place in Pandemonium to the villainous beef-butchers, who mercilessly cut them up for gain.

Having no inclosed pastures, they cannot breed many sheep or goats, which, wandering over the corn fields and gardens, would destroy more than they are worth. It is only in hilly and barren regions where these animals are allowed to roam, and even there not beyond the shepherd's eye; hence in the more fertile and more populous parts of the country, mutton is scarce and seldom eaten. Instead of beef and mutton, however, the Chinese have recourse to dogs and cats, the flesh of which animals is equal in price to that of swine. In default of these, they have no objection to make a dish of rats and snakes; and cockroaches and other reptiles come in to be used either as food or medicine, by a people who are driven frequently to great straits for want of sustenance; animals that die of disease, and those already far gone in a state of decay, are when discovered eagerly devoured by a hungry peasantry in search of food. In short the Chinese have the most unscrupulous stomachs imaginable; every thing animal from the hide to the entrails, and almost every thing vegetable, from the leaves to the roots, is made available to the support of life; and even some parts of the

38

DRESS AND DWELLINGS.

mineral kingdom are laid under requisition for this important purpose.

In their dress, the Chinese are alike anxious to economize the soil. Barrow says, 66 that an acre of cotton will clothe two or three hundred persons:" and as cotton can be planted between the rice crops, and thus vary the productions, and relieve the soil, the Chinese prefer such clothing as they can raise, at the least expense of ground and labour. Were the hundreds of millions of China to be clothed in woollens, an immense tract of grazing land would be required, which would deduct materially from the area devoted to food, and greatly exceed what the Chinese could afford. In their dwellings, likewise, they are particularly frugal of room living together in a very small compass, and crowding into closely built cities, as though ground with them were an object of great moment. A room twenty feet square would afford sufficient space for a dozen people to eat, drink, work, trade, and sleep; while the streets of their towns and cities are so narrow, that it is quite possible to touch each side of the way with the hand as you pass along. Now if we compare this frugality with the extravagance of European nations in regard to room, living on beef and mutton, and wearing woollen clothes; we may easily see that the ground which would sustain one Englishman, would be sufficient for the support of three or four Chinese. Amongst such a selfish and sensual people, so much economy would not be observed, did not stern necessity compel; and what greater necessity can exist

The Chinese use great quantities of gypsum, which they mix with pulse, in order to form a jelly of which they are very fond.