It is when you become acquainted with him, and chat with him, that these external disadvantages seem to vanish from your thoughts, and you realize that here you have a man who has held deep communion with nature, and who knows her so well that she responds to his touch, and pours with no unwilling hand out of the abundance of her treasury the riches that are to fill the homes with gladness and content. The fields that we are now passing through are an evidence of the skill and ingenuity of the farmers. They are all covered with luxuriant crops of rice, and as the sun shines down upon the heads that have just issued from their leafy enclosures, and his rays flash upon the water at their feet, making it to sparkle and glisten as so many diamond points that reflect his glory, the sight is one that the eye never gets tired of looking upon. One is led to reflect in gazing upon these fields with what exquisite beauty and with what marvellous detail God fashions the growing grain so that it shall come with as perfect and divine a form as His great Master Mind can devise it. As far as the eye can reach there is little else to be seen but rice. One sees it down in the hollows where the little rivulets flow, and where they have left their trace in the deeper green and the ranker growth of the crops near by. On the rising ground one's eye is caught with the lifelike, graceful motions that the passing breeze with the art of a master makes the stalks that stand so thickly side by side perform. Like the waves breaking on the shore, one never wearies looking at them, for they vary with every gust of wind, so that they never become monotonous. The only exception to this universal growth of the rice are fields of sweet potatoes that occupy grounds where the water cannot reach. As this is an essential for the cultivation of rice, which must stand in it during the whole time of its growth, until within a few days of its being harvested, other kinds of crops have to be planted in what are called "the dry fields." These are mainly sweet potatoes, though various others are also cultivated in them. Here, for example, is a small plot of land that we are passing by, which illustrates not only the ingenuity of the Chinese farmer, but also shows the varied purposes to which "the dry fields" may be put. There are no fewer than three distinct crops growing harmoniously side by side on it. There are peanuts with their short, insignificant growth and their tiny yellow flowers that seem the very embodiment of retiring modesty. Out of their very midst there spring up the sturdy millet-stalks, with their lofty ambitions that would make them stretch far beyond the humble leaves and flowers at their feet; and last, but not the least important, there is a crop of sweet potatoes that will quietly survive when the other two have been gathered, and will gladden the hearts of the farmers after the others have been garnered.