The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1886-06-30
Country Life in China.

Life in Chinese hamlet is wound up
to run like clockwork, and its busy regu-
larity never varies. The hamlet itself,
says q writer, is often very picturesque.
Here is group of 700 or 800 houses,
situated between two graceful hills, pre-.
senting a charming view. Excepting
about hundred tradesmen massed on
the banks of small river that runs
through the valley, the inhabitants have
scattered their cottages little every
where, leaving between them here and
there spaces occupied by fields and gar
dens. The stream, spanned by bridges,
is constantly dotted with big and little
boats going and coming from neighbor-'
ing towns. Compelled to shape theiI
fields according to the sinuosities tht
water describes and the contours of the
bills, their designs are of the most un
looked-for sort. By small canals, con.
veying the water from the river, the ter
races on the hills are irrigated for culti
vation. Upon these terraces the gay
green color of the rice fields predomi.
mates over the darker tint of the sugar
cane in spots not 80 we'll irri.
gated; big yellow flowers stand
out on the cotton stalks; lines OF
orange-trees, with their sombre LEAKAGE,
are visible, and beyond stretch planta-
tions of tea trees, under which is caught
glimpse of the gray earth, contrasting
with all the rest. Rice, tea, cotton,
sugar and oranges are the most important
crops of the locality, but there are several
others that add to its income, viz:
Hemp, yielded by palm tree, its large
leaves reaching twenty feet from the
ground; oil extracted from tree which
has disgusting look on account of its
knotty, crooked trunk and rusty leaves,
and bamboo, the most useful of all the
small trees, and exceedingly graceful,
with its branches extending thirty feet
and balancing their leaves in the slight
est breeze. The country roundabout has
lunches of small trees, from which as
cend morning, noon, and evening, silver
tinklings from the bells of dozen pago-
das, revealing their triple roofs of yellow
tiles and their upturned corners through
riffs in the foliage against the pure blue
of the sky. No rumbling wheels are
heard, and even the song of birds, the
echoing voices of the field laborers, do
not break the deep prevailing stiffness.
Diminutive as the farms are, their yield
is enormous. On farm of four acres a
family will live comfortably and econo-
mize five or six hundred dollars year.
To secure such result, the tillers do not
limit themselves to selling the raw prod
ucts of the land, but transform them as
far as possible by manufacturing in their
homes, They manufacture, by primitive
process. their own oil and sugar, and
weave their silk, hemp, cotton, and, by
thus establishing manufactures as much
as possible on the farms. keep many Ia
borers attached to the soil and prevent
their concentration in large factories,
which would encourage everproduction.
They proportion the quantity of their
products to their immediate wants, thor
oughly convinced that steady work will
always supply them from year to year.
AS consequence, little capital is accu-
mulated, an China, perhaps, has less
money piled up than any other nation
of the worlt.. All this is simply in ac-
cordance with frugal methods of living
and the cardinal idea that work is the
chief end OF man.-Baltimore American.