Part 42

In the province of _Kiang-nan_ each grows his own cotton; his wife and children spin it into thread and it is woven into a web in his own house, sometimes by his own family, but more frequently by others hired for the purpose. A few bamboos constitute the whole machinery required for this operation. Money he has none; but his produce he can easily barter for any little article of necessity or luxury. The superfluities of life, which those in office may have occasion to purchase, are paid for in bars of silver without any impression, but bearing value for weight, like the Roman _as_ or the Hebrew _shekel_. The only coin in circulation is the _tchen_, a piece of some inferior metal mixed with a small proportion of copper, of the value of the thousandth part of an ounce of silver; with this small piece of money the little and constantly demanded necessaries of life are purchased, such as could not conveniently be obtained by way of barter. Silver is rarely lent out at interest, except between mercantile men in large cities. The legal interest is twelve per cent. but it is commonly extended to eighteen, sometimes even to thirty-six. To avoid the punishment of usury, what is given above twelve per cent. is in the shape of a _bonus_. "Usury, in China," observes Lord Macartney, "like gaming elsewhere, is a dishonourable mode of getting money; but by a sort of compact between necessity and avarice, between affluence and distress, the prosecution of a Jew or a sharper is considered by us as not very honourable even in the sufferers."

The greater the distance from the capital, the better was the apparent condition of the people. The Viceroy, when he received his Excellency on the entry of the embassy into this province, happened to cast his eye upon the half-starved and half-naked trackers of the boats; and being either ashamed of their miserable appearance, or feeling compassion for their situation, he ordered every man immediately a suit of new cloaths. In the morning, when our force was mustered, we were not a little surprized to see the great alteration that had taken place in the appearance of our trackers: every man had a blue cotton jacket edged with red, a pair of new white trowsers, and a smart hat with a high crown and feather. The natural fertility of the country, its central situation commanding a brisk trade, the abundance of its fisheries on the large rivers and lakes were incentives to industry, for the vast population that seemed to be equally distributed over every part of the province.

Rice being the staple of China was abundantly cultivated, in all such places as afforded the greatest command of water. The usual average produce of corn-lands is reckoned to be from ten to fifteen for one; and of rice, from twenty-five to thirty; commonly about thirty. Those corn-lands that will admit of easy irrigation are usually turned over with the plough immediately after the grain is cut; which, in the middle provinces, is ready for the sickle early in June, about the same time that the young rice fields stand at the height of eight or ten inches. These being now thinned, the young plants are transplanted into the prepared wheat lands, which are then immediately flooded. Upon such a crop they reckon from fifteen to twenty for one. Instead of rice one of the millets is sometimes sown as an after-crop, this requiring very little water, or the _Cadjan_, a species of _Dolichos_ or small bean, for oil, requiring still less. Or, it is a common practice, after taking off a crop of cotton and indigo, in the month of October, to sow wheat, in order to have the land again clear in the month of May or June. Such a succession of crops, without ever suffering the land to lie fallow, should seem to require a large quantity of manure. In fact, they spare no pains in procuring composts and manures; but they also accomplish much without these materials, by working the soil almost incessantly and mixing it with extraneous matters as, for instance, marle with light and sandy soils, or if this is not to be had, stiff clay; and on clayey grounds they carry sand and gravel. They also drag the rivers and canals and pools of water for slime and mud; and they preserve, with great care, all kinds of urine, in which it is an universal practice to steep the seeds previous to their being sown. If turnip-seeds be steeped in lime and urine, the plant is said not to be attacked by the insect. Near all the houses are large earthen jars sunk in the ground, for collecting and preserving these and other materials that are convertible, by putrefactive fermentation, into manure. Old men and children may be seen near all the villages with small rakes and baskets, collecting every kind of dirt, or offals, that come in their way. Their eagerness to pick up whatever may be used as manure led to some ridiculous scenes. Whenever our barges halted and the soldiers and servants found it necessary to step on shore, they were always pursued to their place of retirement by these collectors of food for vegetables. It may literally be said in this country, that nothing is suffered to be lost. The profession of shaving is followed by vast numbers in China. As the whole head is shaved, except a small lock behind, few, if any, are able to operate upon themselves. And as hair is considered an excellent manure, every barber carries with him a small bag to collect the spoils of his razor.

The common plough of the country is a simple machine and much inferior to the very worst of ours. We saw one drill plough in _Shan-tung_ different from all the rest. It consisted of two parallel poles of wood, shod at the lower extremities with iron to open the furrows; these poles were placed on wheels: a small hopper was attached to each pole to drop the seed into the furrows, which were covered with earth by a transverse piece of wood fixed behind, that just swept the surface of the ground.

The machine usually employed for clearing rice from the husk, in the large way, is exactly the same as that now used in Egypt for the same purpose, only that the latter is put in motion by oxen and the former commonly by water. This machine consists of a long horizontal axis of wood, with cogs or projecting pieces of wood or iron fixed upon it, at certain intervals, and it is turned by a water-wheel. At right angles to this axis are fixed as many horizontal levers as there are circular rows of cogs; these levers act on pivots, that are fastened into a low brick wall built parallel to the axis, and at the distance of about two feet from it. At the further extremity of each lever, and perpendicular to it, is fixed a hollow pestle, directly over a large mortar of stone or iron sunk into the ground; the other extremity extending beyond the wall, being pressed upon by the cogs of the axis in its revolution, elevates the pestle, which by its own gravity falls into the mortar. An axis of this kind sometimes gives motion to fifteen or twenty levers. This machine[63], as well as the plough, still in use in modern Egypt, which is also the same as the Chinese plough, have been considered by a member of the French Institute to be the same instruments as those employed in that country two thousand years ago; and judging from the maxims of the Chinese government, and the character of the people, an antiquity equally great may be assigned to them in the latter country. The bamboo wheel for raising water, or something approaching very near to it, either with buckets appended to the circumference, or with fellies hollowed out so as to scoop up water, was also in use among the ancient Egyptians; and, as I have before observed, continue to be so among the Syrians; from these they are supposed to have passed into Persia, where they are also still employed, and from whence they have derived, in Europe, the name of Persian wheels. The chain-pump of China, common in the hands of every farmer, was likewise an instrument of husbandry in Egypt.

[63] See the plate facing page 37.

A very erroneous opinion seems to have been entertained in Europe, with regard to the skill of the Chinese in agriculture. Industrious they certainly are, in an eminent degree, but their labour does not always appear to be bestowed with judgment. The instruments, in the first place, they make use of are incapable of performing the operations of husbandry to the greatest advantage. In the deepest and best soils, their plough seldom cuts to the depth of four inches, so that they sow from year to year upon the same soil, without being able to turn up new earth, and to bury the worn-out mould to refresh itself. Supposing them, however, to be supplied with ploughs of the best construction, we can scarcely conceive that their mules and asses and old women, would be equal to the task of drawing them.

The advantage that large farms in England possess over small ones consists principally in the means they afford the tenant of keeping better teams than can possibly be done on the latter, and consequently of making a better _tilth_ for the reception of seed. The opulent farmer, on the same quantity of ground, will invariably raise more produce than the cottager can pretend to do. In China nine-tenths of the peasantry may be considered as cottagers, and having few cattle (millions I might add none at all) it can scarcely be expected that the whole country should be in the best possible state of cultivation. As horticulturists they may perhaps be allowed a considerable share of merit; but, on the great scale of agriculture, they are certainly not to be mentioned with many European nations. They have no knowledge of the modes of improvement practised in the various breeds of cattle; no instruments for breaking up and preparing waste lands; no system for draining and reclaiming swamps and morasses; though that part of the country over which the grand communication is effected between the two extremities of the empire, abounds with lands of this nature, where population is excessive and where the multitudes of shipping that pass and repass create a never failing demand for grain and other vegetable products. For want of this knowledge, a very considerable portion of the richest land, perhaps, in the whole empire, is suffered to remain a barren and unprofitable waste. If an idea may be formed from what we saw in the course of our journey, and from the accounts that have been given of the other provinces, I should conclude, that one-fourth part of the whole country nearly consists of lakes and low, sour, swampy grounds, which are totally uncultivated: and which, among other reasons hereafter to be mentioned, may serve to explain the frequent famines that occur in a more satisfactory way, than by supposing, with the Jesuits, that they are owing to the circumstance of the nations bordering upon them to the westward being savage and growing no corn. Their ignorance of draining, or their dread of inundations, to which the low countries of China, in their present state, are subject, may perhaps have driven them, in certain situations, to the necessity of levelling the sides of mountains into a succession of terraces; a mode of cultivation frequently taken notice of by the missionaries as unexampled in Europe and peculiar to the Chinese; whereas it is common in many parts of Europe. The mountains of the _Pays de Vaud_, between _Lausanne_ and _Vevay_, are cultivated in this manner to their summits with vines. "This would have been impracticable," says Doctor Moore, "on account of the steepness, had not the proprietors built strong stone walls at proper intervals, one above the other, which support the soil, and form little terraces from the bottom to the top of the mountains." But this method of terracing the hills is not to be considered, by any means, as a common practice in China. In our direct route it occurred only twice, and then on so small a scale as hardly to deserve notice. The whole territorial right being vested in the sovereign, the waste lands of course belong to the crown; but any person, by giving notice to the proper magistrate, may obtain a property therein, so long as he continues to pay such portion of the estimated produce as is required to be collected into the public magazines.

When I said that the Chinese might claim a considerable share of merit as horticulturists, I meant to confine the observation to their skill and industry of raising the greatest possible quantity of vegetables from a given piece of ground. Of the modes practised in Europe of improving the quality of fruit, they seem to have no just notion. Their oranges are naturally good and require no artificial means of improvement, but the European fruits, as apples, pears, plums, peaches and apricots are of indifferent quality. They have a common method of propagating several kinds of fruit-trees, which of late years has been practised with success in Bengal. The method is simply this: they strip a ring of bark, about an inch in width, from a bearing branch, surround the place with a ball of fat earth or loam bound fast to the branch with a piece of matting; over this they suspend a pot or horn with water having a small hole in the bottom just sufficient to let the water drop, in order to keep the earth constantly moist; the branch throws new roots into the earth just above the place where the ring was stripped off; the operation is performed in the spring, and the branch is sawn off and put into the ground at the fall of the leaf; the following year it bears fruit. They have no method of forcing vegetables by artificial heat, or by excluding the cold air and admitting, at the same time, the rays of the sun through glass. Their chief merit consists in preparing the soil, working it incessantly, and keeping it free of weeds.

Upon the whole, if I might venture to offer an opinion with respect to the merit of the Chinese as agriculturists, I should not hesitate to say that, let as much ground be given to one of their peasants as he and his family can work with the spade, and he will turn that piece of ground to more advantage, and produce from it more sustenance for the use of man, than any European whatsoever would be able to do; but, let fifty or one hundred acres of the best land in China be given to a farmer, at a mean rent, so far from making out of it the value of three rents, on which our farmers usually calculate, he would scarcely be able to support his family, after paying the expence of labour that would be required to work the farm.

In fact there are no great farms in China. The inhabitants enjoy every advantage which may be supposed to arise from the lands being pretty equally divided among them, an advantage of which the effects might probably answer the expectations of those who lean towards such a system, were they not counteracted by circumstances that are not less prejudicial, perhaps, to the benefit of the public, than monopolizing farmers are by such persons supposed to be in our own country. One of the circumstances I allude to is the common practice, in almost every part of the country, of assembling together in towns and villages, between which very frequently the intermediate space of ground has not a single habitation upon it; and the reason assigned for this custom is the dread of the bands of robbers that infest the weak and unprotected parts of the country. The consequence of such a system is, that although the lands adjoining the villages be kept in the highest state of cultivation, yet those at a distance are suffered to remain almost useless; for having no beasts of burden, it would be an endless task of human labour to bear the manure that would be required, for several miles, upon the ground, and its produce from thence back again to the village. That such robbers do exist who, in formidable gangs, plunder the peasantry, is very certain: _She-fo-pao_ was watching his grain to prevent its being stolen, when he had the misfortune of shooting his relation, who had also gone out for the same purpose. They are sometimes indeed so numerous, as to threaten their most populous cities. The frequency of such robberies and the alarm they occasion to the inhabitants are neither favourable to the high notions that have been entertained of the Chinese government, nor of the morals of the people. Another, and perhaps the chief, disadvantage arising from landed property being pretty equally divided, will be noticed in speaking of the population and the frequent famines.

The province of _Kiang-nan_ extends from about 31° to 34-1/2° of northern latitude; and the mean temperature, according to Fahrenheit's thermometer, from the 30th of October to the 9th of November, was 54° at sun-rise and 66° at noon; the sky uniformly clear.

The province of _Tche-kiang_ abounds in lakes and is intersected with rivers and canals like _Kiang-nan_; but the produce, except that of a little rice, is very different, consisting principally of silk. For feeding the worms that afford this article, all the fertile and beautiful vallies between the mountains, as well as the plains, are covered with plantations of the mulberry-tree. The small houses, in which the worms are reared, are placed generally in the centre of each plantation; in order that they may be removed as far as possible from any kind of noise; experience having taught them, that a sudden shout, or the bark of a dog, is destructive of the young worms. A whole brood has sometimes perished by a thunder storm. The greatest attention is, therefore, necessary; and, accordingly, they are watched night and day. In fine weather, the young worms are exposed to the sun, upon a kind of thin open gauze stretched in wooden frames; and at night they are replaced in the plantation houses. The trees are pruned from time to time, in order to cause a greater quantity and a constant succession of young leaves. The inhabitants of this province, especially in the cities, are almost universally clothed in silks; this rule among the Chinese of consuming, as much as possible, the products of their own country, and receiving as little as they can avoid from foreign nations, extends even to the provinces; a practice arising out of the little respect that, in China, as in ancient Rome, is paid to those concerned in trade and merchandize.

Besides silk _Tche-kiang_ produces camphor, tallow from the _Croton_, a considerable quantity of tea, oranges, and almost all the fruits that are peculiar to the country. Every part of the province appeared to be in the highest state of cultivation and the population to be immense. Both the raw and manufactured silks, nankins and other cotton cloths, were sold at such low prices in the capital of this province, that it is difficult to conceive how the growers or the manufacturers contrived to gain a livelihood by their labour. But of all others, I am the most astonished at the small returns that must necessarily be made to the cultivators of the tea plant. The preparations of some of the finer kinds of this article are said to require that every leaf should be rolled singly by the hand; particularly such as are exported to the European markets. Besides this, there are many processes, such as steeping, drying, turning, and packing, after it has been plucked off the shrub leaf by leaf. Yet the first cost in the tea provinces cannot be more than from four-pence to two shillings a pound, when it is considered that the ordinary teas stand the East India Company in no more than eight-pence a pound; and the very best only two shillings and eight-pence[64]. Nothing can more clearly point out the patient and unremitting labour of the Chinese, than the preparation of this plant for the market. It is a curious circumstance that a body of merchants in England should furnish employment, as might easily be made appear, to more than a million subjects of a nation that affects to despise merchants, and throws every obstacle in the way of commercial intercourse.

[64] The East India Company pays from thirteen to sixty tales per pecul for their teas; some tea of a higher price is purchased by individuals, but seldom or ever by the Company. A tale is six shillings and eight-pence, and a pecul is one hundred and thirty-three pounds and one third.

The mean temperature of _Tche-kiang_, in the middle of November, was from fifty-six degrees at sun-rise, to sixty-two degrees at noon. The extent from North to South is between the parallels of twenty-eight and thirty-four and a half degrees of northern latitude.

The northern part of _Kiang-see_ contains the great _Po-yang_ lake, and those extensive swamps and morasses that surround it, and which, as I have already observed, may be considered as the sink of China. The middle and southern parts are mountainous. The chief produce is sugar and oil from the _Camellia Sesanqua_. In this province are the principal manufactories of porcelain, whose qualities, as I have in a former chapter observed, depend more on the care bestowed in the preparation and in the selection of the materials, than in any secret art possessed by them. There are also, in this province, large manufactories of coarse earthen ware, of tiles, and bricks.

The extent of _Kiang-see_ is from twenty-eight to thirty degrees, and the temperature, in November, was the same as that of the neighbouring province of _Tche-kiang_.

I have now to mention a subject on which much has already been written by various authors, but without the success of having carried conviction into the minds of their readers, that the things which they offered as facts were either true or possible; I allude to the populousness of this extensive empire. That none of the statements hitherto published are strictly true, I am free to admit, but that the highest degree of populousness that has yet been assigned may be possible, and even probable, I am equally ready to contend. At the same time, I acknowledge that, prepared as we were, from all that we had seen and heard and read on the subject, for something very extraordinary; yet when the following statement was delivered, at the request of the Embassador, by _Chou-ta-gin_, as the abstract of a census that had been taken the preceding year, the amount appeared so enormous as to surpass credibility. But as we had always found this officer a plain, unaffected, and honest man, who on no occasion had attempted to deceive or impose on us, we could not consistently consider it in any other light than as a document drawn up from authentic materials; its inaccuracy, however, was obvious at a single glance, from the several sums being given in round millions. I have added to the table the extent of the provinces, the number of people on a square mile, and the value of the surplus taxes remitted to Pekin in the year 1792, as mentioned in the seventh chapter.