18 EXPEDITION TO JAPAN. 



be found, even in the gorges of the mountains, no matter how small, it is ditched and dyked 

 and flooded, and planted in rice. At this season of the year they are busy preparing their soil 

 for setting out the young crops, which have already been sown very thickly in beds flooded 

 with water, and are now ready /or transplanting in the method practised in all the Eastern 

 world. To prepare the soil for transplanting, they drain much of the water off, but quite 

 enough is left to cover the surface, and makes the labor as muddy and disagreeable as it is 

 possible to conceive. If it is inconvenient to drain the land, they even dig in it when the water 

 is a foot deep. They dig the soil up thoroughly, in beds one foot apart, with long broad hoes 

 and very short handles, not unlike a ship-carpenter's adze. Six or eight men may be seen up 

 to their knees in the mud, one following another, but each turning over deeply his own row or 

 bed, so that the field, when dry, could not be distinguished, without close observation, from one 

 that had been ploughed with a two-horse turning-plough. After digging, they flood again, and 

 harrow with a simple wooden harrow with one handle, and quite light, drawn by a single ox, 

 when both ox and driver sink in the mud above their knees. This is a very slow and rude 

 agricultural operation ; and the work of crossing and pulling down the beds made by the hoe 

 imperfectly done, as the ox-man sometimes sinks deeper, and then goes by jerks and starts, when 

 the harrow may be on the surface of the mud or buried too deeply. But to complete the 

 operation and smooth down the inequalities left, a toothless wooden rake, or board-like 

 scraper, is worked briskly back and forth, until all is smooth and uniformly mixed. The rice 

 plants are pulled up and carefully washed, and tied into bundles of uniform size, and taken to 

 the place intended to be planted, and distributed at equal distances, so as to be convenient for 

 setting out. A number of men and women, 10 or 15, may be seen in one small patch, one 

 following another, each making rows and checks, about 12 inches each way, and planting in 

 each place from 12 to 20 plants. This they seem to do very rapidly; and as the operation is 

 a very tedious one, they must acquire their great dexterity from long practice. The rice is 

 planted in water from six inches to ten inches deep, so that only the tops of the plants are out 

 of water. For several days the plants look yellow, and much time must be lost in their growth 

 from transplanting. Yet this practice would seem to be necessary, for even the plant beds are 

 entirely cleared of the young plants, and then transplanted as the others. After planting, the 

 rice would seem to require but little attention, except to keep it constantly flooded. Very little 

 grass would grow, and no weeds, as they are cropped out by constant cultivation. But the 

 water must require changing often, when they can do it; and in suitable situations, fresh water 

 is kept running through the fields all the crop season. When the rice grain is formed, and 

 the crops begin to mature, the water is drawn off, and the lands drained as much as possible, 

 so as to hasten the ripening and to facilitate the harvesting. They cut rice with a bill-hook 

 grass-knife. The beating is accomplished by the primitive method, with a mortar formed by 

 fire, chisel, and gouge. In the extremity of a large cylindrical piece of timber is a pestle, with 

 rounded and cone-shaped extremities, made smaller in its middle portions, so as to be grasped 

 by the hand, with which it is elevated and let fall, alternately, into the mortar filled with 

 rough rice. 



The rice of Lew Chew cannot be called fine, as the color is often reddish and striped ; yet 

 the plain is very good, and it is very nutritious. 



Their granaries are of peculiar structure — ingenious and well adapted to keep grain dry and 

 entirely free from rats. It consists of a section of a reversed pyramid, built of thin plank, and 

 set in posts six or eight feet high, and carefully covered with thatch— usually rice straw. To 

 prevent rats ascending the posts and working their way through the thin planks to the grain, 



