Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and JapanKing, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Science
Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan
King, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Agriculture -- China; Agriculture -- Japan; Agriculture -- Korea
Soon after leaving the Agricultural Experiment Station of Aichi
prefecture at An Jo we crossed the large Yahagigawa, flowing between
strong levees above the level of the rice fields. Mulberries, with
burdock and other vegetables were growing upon all of the tables
raised one to two, feet above the rice paddies, and these features
continued past Okasaki, Koda, and Kamagori, where the hills in many
places had been recently cut clean of the low forest growth and
where we passed many large stacks of pine boughs tied in bundles for
fuel. After passing Goyu sixty-five miles east from Nagoya, mulberry
was the chief crop. Then came a plain country which had been graded
and leveled at great cost of labor, the benches with their square
shoulders standing three to four feet above the paddy fields; and
after passing Toyohashi some distance we were surprised to cross a
rather wide section of comparatively level land overgrown with pine
and herbaceous, plants which had evidently been cut and recut many
times. Beyond Futagawa rice fields were laid out on what appeared to
be, similar land but with soil a little finer in texture, and still
further along were other flat areas not cultivated.
At Maisaka quite half the cultivated fields appear to be in mulberry
with ponds of lotus plants in low places, while at Hamamatsu the
rice fields are interspersed with many square-shouldered tables
raised three to four feet and occupied with mulberry or vegetables.
As we passed upon the flood plain of the Tenryugawa, with its nearly
dry bed of coarse gravel half a mile wide, the dwellings of farm
villages were, many of them surrounded with nearly solid,
flat-topped, trimmed evergreen hedges nine to twelve feet high, of
the umbrella pine, forming beautiful and effective screens.
At Nakaidzumi we had left the mulberry orchards for those of tea,
rice still holding wherever paddies could be formed. Here, too, we
met the first fields of tobacco, and at Fukuroi and Homouchi large
quantities of imported Manchurian bean cake were stacked about the
station, having evidently been brought by rail. At Kanaya we passed
through a long tunnel and were in the valley of the Oigawa, crossing
the broad, nearly dry stream over a bridge of nineteen long spans
and were then in the prefecture of Shizuoka where large fields of
tea spread far up the hillsides, covering extensive areas, but after
passing the next station, and for seventeen miles before reaching
Shizuoka we traversed a level stretch of nearly continuous rice
fields.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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