134 
THE BRIDGE OE BRIDGES. 
‘‘The sides of the mountains and hills along this river 
were literally covered with the sweet-potato vine ; and, 
from their peculiar manner of cultivating it, there could 
he no loss of soil from the zigzag course of the impover- 
ishing gully, 
“Take a flight of steps six hundred feet high, each 
step being twenty yards broad and six feet higher than 
the lower one, and ranging from fifty to a hundred yards 
in length. 
“ J^ow, manure well the surfaces of these giant steps, 
and you get a series of fertile patches. Then, imagine 
the whole slope of a mountain dug into, smoothed off, 
‘got up' in that style, and you have an idea of how so 
many people manage to live in China. Did they only 
cultivate what we call arable land, half of them would 
starve. It was a rare sight to turn in whatever direction 
and see thousands of hill-side acres thus converted into 
level tracts and rising and retreating before the eye like 
the successive seats of a vast amphitheatre." 
After skipping several pages of my journal, I find the 
following; — 
“Shortly after passing the ruined temple just de- 
scribed, we came to a turn in the river whence we first 
sighted the famous granite bridge of Fou-chow. And 
such a bridge as it was ! — one oblong mass of apparently- 
solid granite, with srpiare holes cut at regular intervals 
to permit the flow of the four-knot tide, and with booths 
and simps of everj' description built upon it from one 
end to the other, — built upon the up-river half of the 
liridge's surface, while the lower half is given to the 
thousands who daily cross it. Such bridges are not built 
