By this time the men had come up, and putting on their straw sandals to protect their feet from the rough stones, tightened their girdles, twisted their tails round the crowns of their heads, and tossing the chair on to their brawny shoulders, they started with a run on their three-mile race. They might have been chair coolies all their lives, considering the easy manner in which they manipulated the chair, and the perfect way in which they kept step, and yet they were simple farmers, whose lives are spent in the cultivation of the soil, but whose poverty has compelled them to devise some rough methods to enable them to drive the wolf from their doors. Some idea of the strain that has been put upon them may be gathered from the fact that these men were willing to carry me for three miles and walk back the same distance for the trifling sum of thirty-eight cash, which was to be equally divided between the two, and which would thus give each one a little under a halfpenny. The Chinese farmer stands second to none in all the world. It would seem, indeed, as though nature recognized in him a master hand, and that she responded to his touch, and poured out her riches in willing obedience to a mind that understood her and had learned her secrets. There is nothing in the world of agriculture that a Chinese farmer does not understand--that is, as far as the products of this land are concerned--and he seems to know the peculiarities of each, and their moods and their whims, and to be able to coax them to show their best face when the time of the harvesting comes round. This is all the more remarkable since he has really so few implements with which to work the marvels he produces. These are the hoe, the plough, and the harrow, and beyond these the Chinese farmer never dreams of desiring any other. The first of these seems never to be out of his hands, for it is the one upon which he relies the most, and the one that is really the most effective implement that he possesses for the cultivation of the soil. It really takes the place of the spade in England, though the latter is never put to such extensive and general uses as the hoe. The Chinaman can do anything with it but make it speak. A farmer well on in years can easily be recognized amidst a number of working men by the curve his hands have taken from holding the hoe in the many years of toil in his fields with it.