Wuchow, in Kwangsi 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 class passengers 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 class quarters on
the Nanning had been separated from the rest of the ship 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 passenger coaches. Both British and Chinese gunboats were
patrolling the river; all Chinese passengers 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
passed, 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 anchored 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 passing 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 canalized,
diked, drained and converted into the most productive of fields,
bearing three or more crops each year. As we passed 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 canals, 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 quantities 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 glass. 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 passed two men in a boat, in charge of a huge flock of some
hundreds of yellow ducklings. Anchored 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 constituted 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 ashore 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 unobserved 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 Japan.
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 ship builder was using his simple, effective bow-brace,
boring holes for the dowel pins in the planking for his ship, 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 ship 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 canal, the double ridge behind is another and
a third canal 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 class 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 accumulated, 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 CANALIZATION 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-shore 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 statesmanship, education and engineering skill to
divert larger amounts of such sediments close along inshore 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 shifting Hwang 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 canals,
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 canalization and delta and
other lowland reclamation work, or of the extent of surface fitting
of fields which have been effected in China, Korea and Japan through
the many centuries, and which are still in progress. The lands so
reclaimed and fitted constitute their most enduring asset and they
support their densest populations. In one of our journeys by
houseboat on the delta canals between Shanghai and Hangchow, in
China, over a distance of 117 miles, we made a careful record of the
number and dimensions of lateral canals entering and leaving the
main one along which our boat-train was traveling. This record shows
that in 62 miles, beginning north of Kashing and extending south to
Hangchow, there entered from the west 134 and there left on the
coast side 190 canals. The average width of these canals, 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 Canal, often exceeded
six feet and our best judgment would place the average depth of all
canals 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 canals, but scarcely more than
one-third of those present are shown on the map. Between A, where we
began our records, before reaching Kashing, and B, near the left
margin of the map, there were forty-three canals 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 canals seen from the train, close along the track, and the
notes show, in a distance of 162 miles, 593 canals between Lungtan
and Nansiang. This is an average of more than three canals 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 illustration is the portion enclosed in the
small rectangle. On this area there are shown 2,700 miles of canals
and only about one-third of the canals shown in Fig. 51 are laid
down on this map, and according to our personal observations there
are three times as many canals 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 canals.
In the next illustration, 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 canals 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 Canal which has a length
of more than eight hundred miles. The plain, east of this canal, as
far north as the mouth of the Hwang ho in 1852, is canalized 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 canal and the coast. Westward, up the Yangtse valley, the
provinces of Anhwei, Kiangsi, Hunan and Hupeh have very extensive
canalized 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."
Westward beyond the limits of the sketch map, up the Hwang ho
valley, there is a reach of 125 miles of irrigated lands about
Ninghaifu, and others still farther west, at Lanchowfu and at Suchow
where the river has attained an elevation of 5,000 feet, in Kansu
province; and there is still to be named the great Canton delta
region. A conservative estimate would place the miles of canals and
leveed rivers in China, Korea and Japan equal to eight times the
number represented in Fig. 52. Fully 200,000 miles in all. Forty
canals across the United States from east to west and sixty from
north to south would not equal, in number of miles those in these
three countries today. Indeed, it is probable that this estimate is
not too large for China alone.
As adjuncts to these vast canalization works there have been
enormous amounts of embankment, dike and levee construction. More
than three hundred miles of sea wall alone exist in the area covered
by the sketch map, Fig. 52. The east bank of the Grand Canal,
between Yangchow and Hwaianfu, is itself a great levee, holding back
the waters to the west above the eastern plain, diverting them
south, into the Yangtse kiang. But it is also provided with
spillways for use in times of excessive flood, permitting waters to
discharge eastward. Such excess waters however are controlled by
another dike with canal along its west side, some forty miles to the
east, impounding the water in a series of large lakes until it may
gradually drain away. This area is seen in Fig. 53, north of the
Yangtse river.