208 
WANDERINGS IN CHINA. 
Chap. XII . 
This the female members clean, spin, and weave at home. 
In every cottage throughout this district the traveller 
meets with the spinning-wheel and the small hand-loom, 
which used to be common in our own country in days 
of yore, but which have now given way to machinery. 
These looms are plied by the wives and daughters, who 
are sometimes assisted by the old men or young boys 
who are unfit for the labours of the field. Where the 
families are numerous and industrious, a much 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 oloth. 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 necessaries of life ; the surplus 
seeds are converted into oil ; 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 vegeta- 
bles are frequently above gTound in the cotton-fields 
