100 



streams are walled up, and the streams themselves are used for 

 fish, power, and irrigation; the sides of the hills and railroad 

 embankments furnish hay, and the groves afford building 

 material and fuel. Ordinary woods, in the American sense of 

 the word, are unknown, at least near the railway track, and a 

 wild flora is never seen from the train, except along the flood- 

 plains of rivers subject to frequent overflow. In short, all the 

 arable land is used. Farther back from the railway, at the edge 

 of the hills, the narrow valleys have been flattened out and 

 terraced; the sides of the hills have been terraced whenever 

 possible, and in many places so steeply that masonry retaining 

 walls are necessary. The groves of pine and bamboo are usually 

 on the hillsides, probably occupying areas too rocky for agri- 

 culture, but the terraces sometimes extend a thousand feet above 

 the valley. 



Since rice must be flooded at certain times, the fields must be 

 perfectly level. The valley land is not perfectly level, and is 

 consequently divided off into small fields separated by low earth 

 walls. One seldom sees a single field more than an acre in 

 extent, and they will not average a hundred feet on a side. 

 Their sides are straight or rather regularly curved, so that the 

 whole area appears laid out in geometrical fashion. In corners 

 and narrow valleys, or on steeper slopes, the fields become 

 progressively smaller, and we saw one in the shape of a triangle 

 six feet on a side, containing about eighteen square feet. But it 

 was carefully planted to rice and had its regular earth ridge 

 surrounding it. 



Even the earth ridges are cultivated. Standing above the wet 

 rice fields, they will support a different sort of crop, and are 

 usually planted to beans, whose dark-green foliage stands out 

 very clearly against the light-green background of rice. In 

 some cases they are planted with sorghum, or with plants of 

 beans and sorghum alternately, or still more rarely with buck- 

 wheat. 



If there are any weeds, they are invisible from the train. On 

 the whole trip from Tokio to Kobe not one weedy plant was 

 seen rising above the rice fields. Probably there is none, because 

 the soil is too precious to waste on anything of no value. 



