The Governor of Pe-King goes often to visit this field, which is cultivated with great care; and examines all the ridges thoroughly, to see if he can meet with any uncommon ears, such as they reckon good omens; on which occasion he gives notice, that he found a stalk, for instance, that bore thirteen ears. In the autumn the same governor gets in the grain in yellow sacks; which are stowed in a granary built for that purpose, called the Imperial Magazine. This grain is kept for the most solemn ceremonies; for when the Emperor sacrifices to Tyen, or Shang-ti, he offers it as the fruit of his own hands; and on certain days in the year, he presents it to his ancestors, as if they were still living.
Among several good regulations made by the same Emperor, he has shown an uncommon regard for the Husbandmen. To encourage them in their labour, he has ordered the governors of all the cities to send him notice every year, of the person of this profession, in their respective districts, who is most remarkable for his application to agriculture; for unblemished reputation; for preserving union in his own family, and peace with his neighbours; for his frugality and aversion to extravagance. Upon the report of the governor, the Emperor will advance this wise and diligent Husbandman to the degree of a Mandarin of the eighth order, and send him patents of an ordinary Mandarin; which distinction will entitle him to wear the habit of a Mandarin, to visit the governor of the city, to sit in his presence, and drink tea with him. He will be respected all the rest of his days.—After his death he will have funeral obsequies suitable to his degree; and his title of honour shall be written in the hall of his ancestors. What emulation must such a reward excite among the Husbandmen!
Accordingly we find that they are continually busied about their lands if they have any time to spare, they go immediately to the mountains to cut wood; to the garden to look to their herbs, or to cut canes, &c. so that they are never idle. The land in China never lies fallow. Generally the same ground produces three crops in a year; first rice; and before it is reaped they sow fitches; and when they are in, wheat, beans, or some other grain: thus it goes continually round. They very seldom employ their land for unprofitable uses, such as flower gardens, or fine walks; believing useful things more for the public good, and their own.
The attention of husbandmen is chiefly employed in the cultivation of rice. They manure their land extremely well; gathering for that purpose, with extraordinary care, all sorts of ordure, both of men and animals, or truck for it wood, herbs, or linseed oil. This kind of manure, which elsewhere would burn up the plants, is very proper for the lands of China; where they have an art of tempering it with water before they use it. They gather the dung in pails, which they commonly carry covered on their shoulders; and this contributes very much to the cleanness of their cities, whose filth is thus taken away every day.
In the province of Che-Kyang, and other places, where they sow rice, they use balls of hog's, or even human hair; which, according to them, gives strength to the land, and makes that grain grow better. For this reason, Barbers save the hair which they cut off the heads, and sell for about a halfpenny a pound to such people, who carry it away in bags; and you may often see barks loaded with it. When the plant begins to ear, if the land be watered with spring water, they mix quicklime with it; saying that it kills worms and insects, destroys weeds, and gives a warmth to the ground, which contributes much to fertility. By this means the rice fields are so clean, that Navarette, sometimes, walked through them, looking for some small herb; and could never find any; so that he concludes, the rice which is surprisingly tall and fine, draws all the nourishment from the ground.
The husbandmen sow their grain at first without any order; but when it has shot about a foot, or a foot and a half high, they pluck it up by the roots; and making it into a sort of small sheaves, plant it by a line, and checkerwise; to the end, that ears, resting upon each other, may stand more firmly, and resist the winds.—But, before the rice is transplanted, they level the land, and make it very smooth, after the following manner. Having ploughed the ground three or four times successively, always to the ancles in water, they break the clods with the head of their mattocks; then, by the help of a wooden machine (on which a man stands upright, and guides the buffalo that draws it) they smooth the earth, that the water may be every where of an equal height; insomuch that the plains seem more like vast gardens than open fields.
The mountains in China are all cultivated; but one sees neither hedges nor ditches, nor scarce any tree; so fearful they are of loosing an inch of ground. It is very agreeable to behold, in some places, plains three or four leagues in length, surrounded with hills and mountains, cut from bottom to top, into terraces three or four feet high, and rising one above another, sometimes to the number of twenty or thirty. These mountains are not generally rocky, as those in Europe, the soil being light and porous, and so easy to be cut in several provinces, that one may dig three or four hundred feet without meeting with the rock. When the mountains are rocky, the Chinese loosen the stones, and make little walls of them to support the terraces; they then level the good soil and sow it with grain.
They are still more industrious.—Though in some provinces, there be barren and uncultivated mountains, yet the valleys and fields which separate them in a vast number of places, are very fruitful and well cultivated. The husbandman first levels all the unequal places that are capable of culture. He then divides that part of the land, which is on the same level, into plots; and that along the edges of the valleys, which is unequal, into stories, in form of an amphitheatre: and as the rice will not thrive without water, they make reservoirs, at proper distances, and different heights, to catch the rain and the water which descends from the mountains, in order to distribute it equally among their rice plots; either by letting it run down from the reservoir to the plots below, or causing it to ascend from the lower reservoir to the highest stories.
For this purpose they make use of certain hydraulic engines, which are very simple, both as to their make and the manner of playing them. It is composed of a chain made of wood, resembling a chaplet or pair of beads, strung as it were with a great number of flat boards, six or seven inches square, and placed parallel at equal distances. This chain passes through a square tube or gutter: at the lower end whereof is a smooth cylinder or barrel, whose axis is fixed in the two sides: and to the upper end is fastened a sort of drum, set round with little boards to answer those of the chain, which passes round both it and the cylinder; so that when the drum is turned, the chain turns also; and, consequently, the lower end of the gutter or tube being put into the water, and the drum-end set to the height where the water is to be conveyed, the boards filling exactly the cavity of the tube, must carry up a continual stream so long as the machine is in motion; which is performed in three ways:—1st. With the hand, by means of one or two handles applied to the ends of the axis of the drum.—2nd. With the feet, by means of certain large wooden pegs, about half a foot long, set round the axle-tree of the drum for that purpose.—These pegs have long heads, rounded on the outside, for applying the soles of the naked feet; so that one or more men, may with the greatest ease put the engine in motion, either standing or sitting; their hands being employed all the while, the one holding an umbrella, and the other a fan.—3rd. By the assistance of a buffalo, or some other animal made fast to a great wheel, about four yards in diameter, placed horizontally. Round its circumference are fixed a great number of pegs or teeth; which tallying exactly with those in the axle-tree of the drum, turn the machine with a great deal of ease.