TERRACE CULTIVATION. 
201 
construction. They are made entirely of bamboo without any metallic 
fastenings^ and are therefore so light as to turn with the slightest 
impulse from the stream. When in a state of perfect repair, for the 
greater number of those which we saw were far otherwise, the hollow 
bamboos fixed to their circumference and acting as buckets, are set 
on at so nice an angle, that they deliver the water into the trough 
with scarcely any loss. The height of these wheels vary with that 
of the bank over which they raise the water. 
The Embassy having been for many weeks passing through a 
very mountainous country, I had looked with some anxiety for 
examples of that system of terrace cultivation, for which China has 
been famed by all its early describers ; but saw none that satisfied the 
expectation which had been raised by the glowing descriptions of 
various authors. Like one of the missionaries*, I had imagined China 
to be an immense garden, cultivated with infinite care, and receiving 
its chief embellishment from mountains cut into terraces productive 
in all kinds of vegetable food ; and, like him, I was disappointed in 
finding them very frequently barren of the means of subsistence, from 
the base to the summit. Indeed, I apprehend that no belief can be 
less founded on fact, than that the Chinese are in the common practice 
of rendering the surface of mountains naturally sterile, productive by 
any mode of cultivation. The instances of the terracing of hills 
which I had an opportunity of observing, lead me to believe that it is 
in a very great measure confined to their ravines, to their undulations, 
and to their gentlest declivities ; in other words, to those situations 
where an accumulation of their degraded surface, affords a soil natu- 
rally fertile. 
That hills formed of alluvial deposit, and having a soil more than 
a hundred feet in depth, are covered through the medium of terrace 
* 11 En entrant dans le Kian-si j’apper^us a parti de moi, des montagnes arides, et au 
bas, point on presque point de terrein a cultiver. Je m’etais figure qu’elle resemblait a un 
vaste jardin cultive avec beaucoup d’art et de soin.” The same author elsewhere states, 
that in travelling over a portion of China almost equal to France, he saw, “ ni bois, ni 
fontaines, ni jardins, ni arbris fruitiers, ni vignes.” Pere Burgeois, Memoires concernant 
les Chinois, vol. viii. p. 293, &c. 
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