a fluvial plain nearly all fresh ploughed up. We were too late to see the paddy, or rice growing. Here and there were a few patches of barley, and now and then a field of hemp in full blossom that scented the air for a long way round. Often our road lay through fields of sugar cane. The canes grow about 7 or 8 feet high, and look very well with their green tops.
The highway road passing through these fields is a curiosity. It is raised a few feet above the field, and is about a yard wide on an average. On each side runs a ditch about a foot wide. Since these roads are only for foot passengers they answer very well. Remember there are no horses ever dreamt of, and only here and there a poor lean solitary Chinese cow, with a hump on his back on the hills. There are no hedges or fences, and thus it is all open country. The outside narrow ditches are all that separate the fields, and as most of the people are not troubled with shoes, a little mud and dirt is not minded.
We now and then passed a troupe of pedestrians on their way to the town to sell their produce and buy new supplies. Many of them had brown sugar in square cakes, and many more were loaded with oil, which is obtained from a kind of ground nut, largely grown in China. We often saw immense heaps of these nuts. All these things were carried in China fashion, with a pole, and a basket or bucket balanced on each side.
Every few miles we rested in a tea house, and in one, we got some preserved dates and plums. The dates were on strips of bamboo, three on each, and each string cost a cash. They and the plums were very good, especially to us who had been walking a great deal. We passed through Po-kuk - where Mr Lechler lived as a Chinaman for 5 years in one house which he showed us. He is a fine noble fellow and no mistake. Would that all our missionaries were like him. We were again on our route; and continually heard the sound of heavy firing at a distance. These towns and villages have continual animosity with each other, and are continually fighting. They can make their own clumsy cannon, and they pound away at each other finely, sometimes for weeks together. The different clans often get up a bit of a brush about something or other.
Our road at length wound up a narrow pass between two hills, and