It was at Lwanchow that we met the out-going tide of soy beans destined for Japan and Europe, pouring in from the surrounding country in gunny sacks brought on heavy carts drawn by large mules, as seen in Fig. 203, and enormous quantities had been stacked in the open along the tracks, with no shelter whatever, awaiting the arrival of trains to move them to export harbors.
The planting here, as elsewhere, is in rows, but not of one kind of grain. Most frequently two rows of maize, kaoliang or millet alternated with the soy beans and usually not more than twenty-eight inches apart, sharp high ridge cultivation being the general practice. Such planting secures the requisite sunshine with a larger number of plants on the field; it secures a continuous general distribution of the roots of the nitrogen-fixing soy beans in the soil of all the field every season, and permits the soil to be more continuously and more completely laid under tribute by the root systems. In places where the stand of corn or millet was too open the gaps were filled with the soy beans. Such a system of planting possibly permits a more immediate utilization of the nitrogen gathered from the soil air in the root nodules, as these die and undergo nitrification during the same season, while the crops are yet on the ground, and so far as phosphorus and potassium compounds are liberated by this decay, they too would become available to the crops.
The end of the day's journey was at Shanhaikwan on the boundary between Chihli and Manchuria, the train stopping at 6:20 P. M. for the night. Stepping upon the veranda from our room on the second floor of a Japanese inn in the early morning, there stood before us, sullen and grey, the eastern terminus of the Great Wall, winding fifteen hundred miles westward across twenty degrees of longitude, having endured through twenty-one centuries, the most stupendous piece of construction ever conceived by man and executed by a nation. More than twenty feet thick at the base and than twelve feet on the top; rising fifteen to thirty feet above the ground with parapets along both faces and towers every two hundred yards rising twenty feet higher, it must have been, for its time and the methods of warfare then practiced, when defended by their thousands, the boldest and most efficient national defense ever constructed. Nor in the economy of construction and maintenance has it ever been equalled.
Even if it be true that 20,000 masons toiled through ten years in its building, defended by 400,000 soldiers, fed by a commissariat of 20,000 more and supported by 30,000 others in the transport, quarry and potters' service, she would then have been using less than eight tenths per cent of her population, on a basis of 60,000,000 at the time; while according to Edmond Théry's estimate, the officers and soldiers of Europe today, in time of peace, constitute one per cent of a population of 400,000,000 of people, and these, at only one dollar each per day for food, clothing and loss of producing power would cost her nations, in ten years, more than $14,000 million. China, with her present habits and customs, would more easily have maintained her army of 470,000 men on thirty cents each per day, or for a total ten-year cost of but $520,000,000. The French cabinet in 1900 approved a naval program involving an expenditure of $600,000,000 during the next ten years, a tax of more than $15 for every man, woman and child in the Republic.
Leaving Shanhaikwan at 5:20 in the morning and reaching Mukden at 6:30 in the evening, we rode the entire day through Manchurian fields. Manchuria has an area of 363,700 square miles, equal to that of both Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa combined. It has roughly the outline of a huge boot and could one slide it eastward until Port Arthur was at Washington, Shanhaikwan would fall well toward Pittsburgh, both at the tip of the broad toe to the boot. The foot would lie across Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and all of New England, extending beyond New Brunswick with the heel in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Harbin, at the instep of the boot, would lie fifty miles east of Montreal and the expanding leg would reach northwestward nearly to James Bay, entirely to the north of the Ottawa river and the Canadian Pacific, spanning a thousand miles of latitude and nine hundred miles of longitude.
The Liao plain, thirty miles wide, and the central Sungari plain, are the largest in Manchuria, forming together a long narrow valley floor between two parallel mountain systems and extending northeasterly from the Liao gulf, between Port Arthur and Shanhaikwan, up the Liao river and down the Sungari to the Amur, a distance of eight hundred or more miles. These plains have a fertile, deep soil and it is on them and other lesser river bottoms that Manchurian agriculture is developed, supporting eight or nine million people on a cultivated, acreage possibly not greater than 25,000 square miles.
Manchuria has great forest and grazing possibilities awaiting future development, as well as much mineral wealth. The population of Tsitsihar, in the latitude of middle North Dakota, swells from thirty thousand to seventy thousand during September and October, when the Mongols bring in their cattle to market. In the middle province, at the head of steam navigation on the Sungari, because of the abundance and cheapness of lumber, Kirin has become a shipbuilding center for Chinese junks. The Sungari-Milky-river, is a large stream carrying more water at flood season than the Amur above its mouth, the latter being navigable 450 miles for steamers drawing twelve feet of water, and 1500 miles for those drawing four feet, so that during the summer season the middle and northern provinces have natural inland waterways, but the outlet to the sea is far to the north and closed by ice six months of the year.
Not far beyond the Great Wall of China, fast falling into ruin, partly through the appropriation of its material for building purposes now that it has outlived its usefulness, another broad, nearly dry stream bed was crossed. There, in full bloom, was what appeared to be the wild white rose seen earlier, further south, west of Suchow, having a remarkable profusion of small white bloom in clusters resembling the Rambler rose. One of these bushes growing wild there on the bank of the canal had over spread a clump of trees one of which was thirty feet in height, enveloping it in a mantle of bloom, as seen in the upper section of Fig. 204. The lower section of the illustration is a closer view showing the clusters. The stem of this rose, three feet above the ground, measured 14.5 inches in circumference. If it would thrive in this country nothing could be better for parks and pleasure drives. Later on our journey we saw it many times in bloom along the railway between Mukden and Antung, but nowhere attaining so large growth. The blossoms are scant three-fourths inch in diameter, usually in compact clusters of three to eleven, sometimes in twos and occasionally standing singly. The leaves are five-foliate, sometimes trifoliate; leaflets broadly lanceolate, accuminate and finely serrate; thorns minute, recurrent and few, only on the smaller branches.
In a field beyond, a small donkey was drawing a stone roller three feet long and one foot in diameter, firming the crests of narrow, sharp, recently formed ridges, two at a time. Millet, maize and kaoliang were here the chief crops. Another nearly dry stream was crossed, where the fields became more rolling and much cut by deep gullies, the first instances we had seen in China except on the steep hillsides about Tsingtao. Not all of the lands here were cultivated, and on the untilled areas herds of fifty to a hundred goats, pigs, cattle, horses and donkeys were grazing.
Fields in Manchuria are larger than in China and some rows were a full quarter of a mile long, so that cultivation was being done with donkeys and cattle, and large numbers of men were working in gangs of four, seven, ten, twenty, and in one field as high as fifty, hoeing millet. Such a crew as the largest mentioned could probably be hired at ten cents each, gold, per day, and were probably men from the thickly settled portions of Shantung who had left in the spring, expecting to return in September or October. Both laborers and working animals were taking dinner in the fields, and earlier in the day we had seen several instances where hay and feed were being taken to the field on a wooden sled, with the plow and other tools. At noon this was serving as manger for the cattle, mules or donkeys.