SURJ^EY OF THE CEI^RAL FLOWERY LAND. G7 
eared rice. The broad river flows cabiily by. 
Here and there, stretched *out athwart the stream, 
arc countless fishing-stakes, extending in regular, 
long rows, with black fishing-nets drying in the 
sun, and arranged in festoons on the ropes which 
stretch from pole to pole. Little sampans are 
floating like so many waterfowl on the water, 
di'ifting with the current, and paying out their 
fishing-lines furnished with a hundred baited hooks; 
poor villagers, dusky, half-clothed figures, are 
patiently seeking for cat-fish, or groping for mussels 
on the river banks which the tide leaves bare ; up 
little narrow creeks cluster hundreds of brown 
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dome-roofed fishing craft, while conspicuous over 
the low land are the tanned square sails of the 
trading junks sailing along the distant reaches of 
the winding river. 
I ascended a neighbouring hill, and from the 
summit surveyed the beauty, fertility, and teeming 
population of this Central Flowery Land.’' The 
brown sides of the old, old granite hill on which I 
stood were pitted with innumerable graves of the 
