Immigrants get 5 _chō_, but if they are without capital they first go to work as tenants. There are contractors in the towns who supply labourers to farmers and factories at busy times. When newcomers have capital and are keen on rice growing and are families working without hired labour, they are strongly recommended not to devote more than 2-1\2 _chō_ to rice--from 3 to 5 _chō_ are the absolute limit--against 1-1\2 or 2 _chō_ to other crops. When the holder of a 5-_chō_ holding prospers he buys a second farm and more horses and implements, and hires labour for the busy period. But 10 or 15 _chō_ is considered as much as can be worked in this way. If the area is more than 10 or 15 _chō_ it is difficult to get labour in the busy season, for it is the busy season for everybody. Labourers from a distance can be got only at an unprofitable rate. It is first the lack of capital and then the lack of labour which prevents the farmer extending his holding.[244] The limit of practical mixed farming is 30 _chō_. (Stock farming is for milk rather than for meat, and more than one condensed-milk factory is in operation.) Even in Hokkaido large farming, as it is understood in Great Britain and America, is not easy to find.[245] On my journey north from Sapporo the first thing which brought home to me the colonial character of the agriculture was the tree stumps sticking up in the paddies. The second was the extent to which the rivers were still uncontrolled. The longest river in Japan, 260 miles long, is in Hokkaido. There was obviously a vast moorland area in need of draining. Peat--there are 300,000 _chō_ of it--may be a standby when the waste of timber that is going on brings about a shortage of fuel other than coal. From poor peat soil, which was growing oats, buckwheat and millet, we passed to land capable of producing rice, and saw ploughing with horses. One region had been opened for only twenty years, but already the farmers had cultivated the hillsides in the assiduous fashion of Old Japan. From Ashigawa we made some excursions in a prim _basha_ to places which were always several miles farther on than they were supposed to be and were usually reached by tracks covered with stones from 6 to 9 ins. long and having ruts a foot deep. We visited a large estate with 350 tenants who were mostly working 2-1/2 _chō_, though some had twice as much. Nearly all of these tenants appeared to have one or two horses, although the estate manager had advised them to use oxen or cows as more economical draught animals. When I remembered the distance the farmers were from the town and the state of the roads, and noticed the satisfaction which the men we passed displayed in being able to ride, it was easy to believe that the possession of a horse might have its value as a means of social progress. During the last ten years half the tenants had made enough to enable them to buy farms. The tenants on this estate had two temples and one shrine.[246]