CHINESE GARDENING. 37 



estates; while they cultivate on ridges, with minute care, 

 their favourite sweet potato. Eound San Fernando, a Chinese 

 will rent from a sugar-planter a bit of land which seems 

 hopelessly infested with weeds, even of the worst of all 

 sorts,-^the creeping Para grass ^ which was introduced 

 a generation since, with some trouble, as food for cattle, 

 and was supposed at first to be so great a boon that the 

 .gentleman who brought it in received public thanks and 

 a valuable testimonial. The Chinaman will take the land 

 for a single year, at a rent, I believe, as high as a pound an 

 acre, grow on it his sweet potato crop, and return it to the 

 owner, cleared, for the time being, of every weed. The richei- 

 shopiveepers have each a store : but they disdain to live 

 at it. Xear by each you see a comfortable low house, with 

 verandahs, green jalousies, and often pretty flowers in pots ; 

 and catch glimpses inside of papered walls, prints, and smart 

 moderator-lamps, which seem to be fashionable among the 

 Celestials. But for one fashion of theirs, I confess, I was not 

 prepared. 



We went to church a large, airy, clean, wooden one 

 which ought to have had a verandah round to keep off the 

 intolerable sunlight, and which might, too, have had another 

 pulpit. For in getting up to preach in a sort of pill-box on a 

 long stalk, I found the said stalk surging and nodding so 



^ Pauicum sj). 



