274 cOTTON—STALKS USED FOR FUEL. [Cuapr. XIV. 
greater quantity of cloth is woven than is required 
for their own wants, and in this case the surplus is 
taken to Shanghae and the adjacent towns for sale. 
A. sort of market is held every morning at one of 
the gates of the city, where these people assemble 
and dispose of their little bundles of cotton cloth. 
Money is in this manner realised for the purchase 
of tea and other necessaries which are not produced 
by the farms in this particular district. 
When the last crops are gathered from the cotton 
fields, the stalks are carried home for fuel. Thus 
every part of the crop is turned to account: the 
cotton itself clothes them, and affords them the 
means of supplying themselves with all the neces- 
saries of life; the stalks boil their frugal meals; and 
the ashes even—the remains of all—are strewed 
over their fields for the purposes of manure. But 
even before this takes place, the system I have 
already noticed—of sowing and planting fresh 
crops before the removal of those which occupy the 
land—is already in progress. Clover, beans, and 
other vegetables are frequently above ground in 
the cotton fields before the stalks of the latter are 
removed. ‘Thus, the Chinese in the northern pro- 
vinces lengthen by every means in their power 
the period of growth; and gain as much as_ they 
possibly can from the fertility of their land. 
The reader must bear in mind, however, that the 
soil of this district is a rich deep loam, which is 
capable of yielding many crops in succession with- 
out the aid of a particle of manure. Nature has 
