174 REMINISCENCES OF A VOYAGE TO AND FROM CHINA. 
very branchy, and had a feeble, stunted look, caused, no doubt, by the 
defoliation to which they are so often subjected. Tea is very little 
cultivated about Canton, and this, the interpreter told me, was only 
kept for the private use of the owner. 
The whole arable face of the country is uninclosed, no part of the 
surface being lost by either fences or high roads. Canals answer the 
purpose of the latter, and footpaths serve for the former. Nor are 
fences necessary where no cattle are depastured, nor where neither 
waifs are sought or strays intrude. Tanks or ponds are in every 
garden, not only for supplying the crops in dry weather, but for 
fattening a few fish for sale. 
It was not the season of the year for seeing the crops of their 
kitchen-garden grounds, and we therefore know much less of their 
productions and modes of culture than if it had been at midsummer or 
in the autumn. They break up the surface with large hoes, and 
smooth it with rakes, and the manure is applied from a pail and a 
wooden spatula. In the northern provinces, and, particularly, for 
preparing land for rice, draught oxen and ploughs are used, but nothing 
of the kind is seen about Canton. Nor did we see a horse all the time 
we were there except one, and that was a white pony rode by a mandarin 
of the first rank. 
The policy of the Chinese government in prohibiting the importation 
of foreign food and all kinds of luxuries, necessarily compels the 
numerous population to cultivate every square yard of ground for their 
ordinary subsistence. Notwithstanding this restriction on the appetites 
of the community, no nation in the world, perhaps, live better than the 
Chinese. They have what may be called two dinners in the day, at 
ten in the morning and four in the afternoon, both most substantial 
meals. They use boiled rice instead of bread, and their standing 
dishes are stews, in which several kinds of vegetables are sliced, and 
always enriched with pork or duck or goose, which has been previously 
roasted, and afterwards cut into small pieces for the stew. For drink 
at these meals they have tea, but without either milk or sugar: indeed, 
tea is partaken of at all times in the day, but never as a meal. After 
the afternoon dinner, very little business is done by those engaged in 
trade, that time being given to play, smoking tobacco, and drinking 
Samskoo, an ardent spirit of the nature of arrack. 
This description is of what we observed among the mercantile 
people at Canton. To the tables of the more opulent people we had 
no access, but we were told their style of living is very similar to that 
described; but when they give entertainments to European gentlemen, 
the table is spread and furnished in the European style. 
Let us now turn to the preparations made for packing and transplant- 
