202 
TERRACE CULTIVATION. 
cultivation with a succession of gardens, in some parts of China, as 
stated by Du Halde, I can believe, because I have found that author 
generally accurate in his statements of matters of fact; but I equally 
believe that under the most favourable circumstances, terrace cultiva- 
tion is not a favourite process with the Chinese, but is only resorted to 
by them when they cannot obtain the full means of subsistence from the 
plains. On this subject my experience agrees with that of Mr. Barrow, 
and with a still later author, M. De Guignes, who accompanied the 
Dutch embassy. The former has had occasion to observe, that in his 
whole route, terrace cultivation “ occurred on so small a scale as hardly 
to deserve notice and the latter has remarked that, although he cer- 
tainly saw small fields cultivated on the very tops of some mountains in 
a certain canton of Kiang-nan, where the mountainous and contracted 
nature of the country had obliged the inhabitants to do so ; yet he 
had traversed districts filled with mountains, of which no portion was 
thrown into cultivation. The same author states, that whenever the 
flat country is sufficient for the nourishment of the inhabitants, the 
slightest elevations are suffered to remain untilled. I may add on this 
subject, that we often passed mountains equally capable of cultivation 
with others that were terraced, but on which we could distinguish no 
trace of tillage. 
Du Halde has given a chapter on the abundance which prevails in 
China, in which he has assembled in a few pages descriptions of all 
the various trees and vegetables which supply the wants of its inha- 
bitants, and are scattered through an empire embracing in its range of 
latitude a temperate and tropical climate. These, displayed in so 
compressed a view and as illustrative of the general fertility of the 
empire, have led, I conceive, to very mistaken conclusions respect- 
ing the general productiveness of the soil. In some districts, perhaps, 
in which peculiar causes have operated, as in the neighbourhood of 
tea countries, for instance, “ the whole surface is, with trifling excep- 
tions, dedicated to the production of food for man alone but this 
proposition does not certainly apply to the whole empire.* 
* See Malthus on Population. 
