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 winter dress which is the
embodiment of conversation, retaining the fires 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 centuries, 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 moved with the promptness of a
railway train. On reaching Kobe we transferred to the Yamaguchi Maru
which sailed the following morning, to shorten the time of reaching
Shanghai. This left but an afternoon for a trip into the country
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 carrying a winter crop. And Fig. 20 shows how
closely the crops crowd the houses and shops. Here were very 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 entirely devoted to English violets just coming into
full bloom. They 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 checked the loss of heat absorbed by the soil.
The voyage from Kobe to Moji was made between 10 in the morning,
February 24th, and 5 .30 P. M. of February 25th over a quiet sea
with an enjoyable ride. Being fogbound during the night gave us the
whole of Japan's beautiful Inland Sea, enchanting beyond 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 stevedores 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 illumination suggested 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, bending 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 human chains, in service the prototype of
our modern 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, emptying the buckets down the chute, was a mother with her
two-year-old child in the sling on 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 coming down from the terraced gardens to the markets. We passed
loads of green bamboo poles just cut, three inches in diameter at
the butt and twenty feet long, drawn on carts. Both men and women
were carrying young children and older ones were playing and singing
in the street. Very 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 courts of
any size separating them from the market or shop. The opportunity
which the oriental housewife may have in the choice of vegetables on
going to the market, and the attractive manner of displaying such
products in Japan, are seen in Fig. 22.
We finally reached one of the terraced hillsides 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 height. One of these hillside slopes is seen
in Fig. 23. These terraced gardens are both short and narrow and
most of them bounded by stone walls on three sides, suggesting house
foundations, the two end walls sloping down the hill from the height
of the back terrace, dropping to the ground level in front, these
forming foot-paths leading up the slope occasionally with one, two
or three steps in places.
Each terrace sloped slightly down the hill at a small angle and had
a low ridge along the front. Around its entire border a narrow drain
or furrow was arranged to collect surface water and direct it to
drainage channels or into a catch basin where it might be put back
on the garden or be used in preparing liquid fertilizer. At one
corner of many of these small terraced gardens were cement lined
pits, used both as catch basins for water and as receptacles 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 backets 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 population 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 cropping. 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 Woosung in the night and anchored to await
morning and tide before ascending the Hwangpoo, believed by some
geographers to be the middle 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 awaiting 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 plain under the ever increasing load of
river silt.
A closer view of these graves in the 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 agricultural 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 surmounting 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.
Everywhere we went in China, about all of the very old and large
cities, the proportion of grave land to cultivated fields is very
large. In the vicinity of Canton Christian college, on Honam island,
more than fifty per cent of the land was given over to graves and in
many places 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 which water may be
more easily applied and which are the most productive. 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
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 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 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 by 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 temporary 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 discernible 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 dead 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 they 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 temporary location for the body, waiting
for a favorable opportunity to remove it to the family group. This
is often the occasion for the isolated coffin so frequently seen
under a simple thatch of rice straw, as in Fig. 29; and the many
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 the body rests, this acting as an effective
absorbent.
It is the custom in some parts of China, if not in all, to
periodically restore the mounds, maintaining their height 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 centuries 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
earning of the family is considered and when there is added to this
the yearly expense of ancestor worship. How such voluntary burdens
are assumed by people under such circumstances is hard to
understand. Missionaries assert it is fear of evil consequences 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 people with
strong filial affection should have reached, carry 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 comfort?
Even in our own case it will hardly be maintained that our burial
customs have reached their best and final solution, 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 few appeared underfed. To realize
that these are strong, hardy men it was only necessary to watch them
carrying 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 over long distances, as seen in
Fig. 32, prove their great endurance. This same type of vehicle,
too, is one of the common means of transporting 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 farmers bad 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 Hongkong to
meet spring at Canton, beyond the Tropic of Cancer, 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 increased 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,
seventy miles to sea, where there is a lighthouse and a telegraph
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
inaccessible heights 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 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 Chungming 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 year 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 beautiful 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. 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
interspersed 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.