The country through which they now travelled was agreeably diversified
with hill and dale, cultivated like a garden, and sprinkled with
beautiful fields of rice, enclosed by rows of the tea-shrub, planted at
a short distance from the road. On the next day they entered a plain
country, watered by numerous rivers, and laid out in rice-fields like
the former. In passing through this district they had for the first time
an opportunity of observing the form and features of the women of the
province of Fisen. Though already mothers, and attended by a numerous
progeny, they were so diminutive in stature that they appeared to be so
many girls, while the paint which covered their faces gave them the air
of great babies or dolls. They were handsome, however, notwithstanding
that, in their quality of married women, they had plucked out the hair of
both eyebrows; and their behaviour was agreeable and genteel. At Sanga,
the capital of the province, he remarked the same outrageous passion
for painting the face in all the sex, though they were naturally the
most beautiful women in Asia; and, as might be conjectured from the rosy
colour of their lips, possessed a fine healthy complexion.
Upon quitting the province of Fisen, and entering that of Toussima,
a mountainous and rugged country, they travelled in a rude species
of palanquin called a cango, being nothing more than a small square
basket, open on all sides, though covered at top, and carried upon a
pole by two bearers. In ascending the mountain of Fiamitz they passed
through a village, the inhabitants of which, they were told, were all
the descendants of one man, who was then living. Whether this was true
or not, Kæmpfer found them so handsome and well formed, and at the same
time so polished and humane in their conversation and manners, that they
seemed to be a race of noblemen. The scenery in this district resembled
some of the woody and mountainous parts of Germany, consisting of a
rapid succession of hills and valleys, covered with copses or woods; and
though in some few places too barren to admit of cultivation, yet, where
fertile, so highly valued, that even the tea-shrub was only allowed to
occupy the space usually allotted to enclosures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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