Part 6 (2/2)

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 purpose 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 arrangement 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l mud had been applied at a rate exceeding 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 ill.u.s.tration may be seen the section of ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.ls, 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 ca.n.a.ls 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 fis.h.i.+ng. The earth of the large grave mound seen across a ca.n.a.l in the center background of the upper portion of the engraving had been collected in a similar manner.

In the Chekiang province ca.n.a.l 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 Kas.h.i.+ng early in April. The boat anch.o.r.ed in front of the mulberry orchard is the home of a family coming from a distance, seeking employment during the season for picking mulberry leaves to feed silkworms. We were much surprised, on looking back at the 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 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 followed by the Chinese farmers in this province is the periodic 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 orchards. We saw many instances, when traveling by boat-train between Shanghai, Kas.h.i.+ng and Hangchow, of soil being carried from rice fields and either stacked on the banks or dropped into the ca.n.a.l. Such soil was oftenest taken from narrow trenches leading through the fields, laying them off in beds. It is our judgment that the soil thrown into the ca.n.a.ls undergoes important changes, perhaps through the absorption of soluble plant food substances such as lime, phosphoric acid and potash withdrawn from the water, or through some growth or fermentation, 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 mulberry orchards.

It is clearly recognized by the farmers that mud collected from those sections of the ca.n.a.l leading through country villages, such as that seen in Fig. 10, is both inherently more fertile and in better physical condition than that collected in the open country.

They attribute this difference to the effect of the village was.h.i.+ng in the ca.n.a.l, 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 ca.n.a.ls. The was.h.i.+ng 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 the silts through their flocculation and precipitation, and that which is added in the form of snail sh.e.l.ls abounding in the ca.n.a.ls. The amount of these may be realized from the large numbers contained in the mud recently thrown out, as seen in the upper section of Fig. 95, where the pebbly appearance of the surface is caused by snail sh.e.l.ls. In the lower section of the same ill.u.s.tration the white spots are snail sh.e.l.ls exposed in the soil of a recently spaded field. The sh.e.l.ls are by 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 quant.i.ties and used as food. Piles containing bushels of the empty sh.e.l.ls were seen along the ca.n.a.ls outside the villages. The snails are cooked in the sh.e.l.l and often sold by measure to be eaten from the hand, as we buy roasted peanuts or popcorn. When a purchase is made the vender clips the spiral point from each sh.e.l.l with a pair of small shears. This admits air and permits the snail to be readily removed by suction when the lips are applied to the sh.e.l.l. In the ca.n.a.ls 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 ca.n.a.l country, to come upon groups of gleaners busy in the bottoms of the shallow agricultural ca.n.a.ls, gathering anything 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 ca.n.a.l are often drained in the manner already described, so that gleaning may be done by hand, wading in the mud. Families living in houseboats make a business of fis.h.i.+ng for shrimp. They trail behind the houseboat one or two other boats carrying hundreds of shrimp traps cleverly constructed 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 their 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 Kas.h.i.+ng on the line of the new railway between Hangchow and Shanghai. The first pa.s.senger 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 paG.o.da standing on a high hill a mile outside the city limits. The day was one of great surprises to these people who had never before seen a pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.s their hands along my coat sleeve to judge the cloth, and a boy felt of my shoes.

Walking through the street we pa.s.sed 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 paG.o.da beggars had distributed themselves, one in a place, at intervals of two or three hundred feet, asking alms, most of them infirm 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 pa.s.sengers. Our train left Shanghai at 4:30 P. M., reaching Hangchow at 5:30 P. M.

the following day, covering a distance along the ca.n.a.l of something more than 117 miles. We paid $5.16, gold, for the exclusive use of a first-cabin, five-berth stateroom for myself and interpreter. It occupied the full width of the boat, lacking about fourteen inches of footway, and could be entered from either side down a flight of five steps. The berths were flat, naked wooden shelves thirty inches wide, separated by a part.i.tion 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 opening in the part.i.tion, permitting it to serve two staterooms, completed the furnis.h.i.+ngs. The roof of the staterooms was covered with an awning and divided crosswise into two tiers of berths, each thirty inches wide, by board part.i.tions six inches high. In these sections pa.s.sengers spread their beds, sleeping heads together, separated only by a headboard six inches high. The awning was only sufficiently high to permit pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.senger 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, b.u.t.terchip 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 appet.i.te 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 fingers. 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, const.i.tute 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 Fig. 10. In the store the eggs were purchased and the chicks were sold, this work being in charge of the women of the family. It was in the extreme rear of the home that thirty incubators were installed, all doing duty and each having a capacity of 1,200 hens' eggs. Four of these may be seen in the ill.u.s.tration 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 having a door cut in one side through which live charcoal may be introduced and the fire partly smothered under a layer of ashes, this serving as the source of heat. The jar is thoroughly insulated, cased in basketwork and provided with a cover, as seen in the ill.u.s.tration. 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 finis.h.i.+ng hatchers and brooders in the form of woven shallow trays with sides warmly 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 incubation; and geese' eggs after six days and again after fourteen 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 twenty-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 sensitive, 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 differences 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 management of the doors or the s.h.i.+fting 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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.

After the chickens have been hatched sufficiently long to require feeding they are ready for market and are then sorted according to s.e.x 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 s.e.x by gently pinching the a.n.u.s. 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 pa.s.sers-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 currency, make the purchase price for eggs nearly 48 cents, and the selling price for the young chicks $1.29, per hundred, 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 millions 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 people 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 j.a.pan, 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 j.a.pan 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 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 j.a.pan. The large boat load of eggs seen in Fig. 97 had just arrived from the country, coming into Shanghai in one of her ca.n.a.ls.

Besides applying ca.n.a.l mud directly to the fields in the ways described there are other very extensive practices of composting it with organic matter of one or another kind and of then using the compost on the fields. The next three ill.u.s.trations 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 ca.n.a.l bank between layers of thin mud dipped from the ca.n.a.l, 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.

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