Our milkman has a very odd name,—translated into English it is "Sweet Potatoes." His Chinese neighbors call him "Old Father Sweet Potatoes."
Some persons think him a good man; others say that he is a very bad one. Just how that is I do not know—his business brings him great temptation.
He is accused of putting water into the milk. He himself says, that he only does it when he has not enough milk to supply all his customers; then he does not know what else he can do. When we engaged him to bring milk to us we took him into our yard and showed him that we had a well of our own.
The Chinese in their own country do not make any use of milk or butter. They have a perfect horror of cheese, and in this part of China, perhaps, not more than one man in a hundred will taste of beef. Only a few cows and bullocks are kept, and these are needed to plough the fields and turn the rude machinery of the sugar mills.
I suppose "Father Sweet Potatoes" had never thought of such a thing as owning a cow, until foreign ships began to come to his part of the country. Of course the ships brought foreign men and women, and these all wanted beef to eat—sometimes the Chinese, wishing to speak contemptuously of them, would call them "beef-eating foreigners,"—and they also wanted milk for their cooking and for their children.
So Mr. Sweet Potatoes bought some cows, hoping to make some money in the milk business. They all had long ropes laced about their horns or threaded through their noses, and he got some little children to hold the ropes and guide the cows in search of food; for there are no grass fields in this part of the country, and all the pastures the cows have are the little green places on the rocky hills and the grassy patches along the brooks; and the children sit by and watch them while they graze, for there are no fences, and, left to themselves, the cows might stray into the rice fields or wander away into places where they would be stolen.
Strange to say, we have our best milk when the winter has almost killed the grass, or when the weather is too stormy for the cows to go out; for then they are fed with the tops of pea-nut plants, either green, or dried like hay, and up for sale in great bundles. This is delicious food for the cows, and when they have it then we have good milk indeed, with a thick, white cream upon it.
THE NATIVE HUMPBACK COW.