When ripe, the crops are cut with a small instrument, not very unlike our own reaping-hook, and are generally thrashed out at once in the fields where they have grown. Sometimes, however, and more particularly in the north, the paddy is tied up in sheaves, and carried home before it is thrashed; indeed every thing in the northern agriculture of the Chinese has a great resemblance to what is practised in Europe.
The _terrace cultivation_ of China has been noticed by nearly all writers upon this country, and, like most other subjects, it has been either much exaggerated or undervalued. It appeared to me to be carried to the greatest perfection on the hill sides adjacent to the river Min near Foo-chow-foo; at least I was more struck with it there than any where else. On sailing up that beautiful river, these terraces look like steps on the sides of the mountains, one rising above another, until they sometimes reach six or eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. When the rice and other crops are young, these terraces are clothed in luxuriant green, and look like a collection of gardens among the rugged and barren mountains. The terrace system is adopted by the Chinese, either for the purpose of supplying the hill sides with water where paddy is to be grown, or to prevent the heavy rains from washing down the loose soil from the roots of other vegetables. Hence these cuttings are seen all over the sides of the hills, not exactly level like the rice terraces, but level enough to answer the purpose of checking the rains in their descent down the mountain. For the same reason, the sweet potato and some other crops which are grown on the hills are always planted in ridges which run cross-ways or horizontally; indeed, were the ridges made in a different direction, the heavy rains which fall in the early summer months would carry both the loose soil and crops down into the plains.
Rice is grown on the lower terrace ground, and a stream of water is always led from some ravine and made to flow across the sides of the hills, until it reaches the highest terrace, into which it flows and floods the whole of the level space. When the water rises three or four inches in height, which is sufficiently high for the rice, it finds vent at an opening made for the purpose in the bank, through which it flows into the terrace below, which it floods in the same manner, and so on to the lowest. In this way the whole of the rice terraces are kept continually flooded, until the stalks of the crops assume a yellow ripening hue when the water being no longer required, it is turned back into its natural channel, or led to a different part of the hill, for the nourishment of other crops. These mountain streams, which abound in all parts of the hilly districts, are of the greatest importance to the farmer; and as they generally spring from a high elevation in the ravines, they can be conducted at pleasure over all the lower parts of the hills. No operation in agriculture gives him and his labourers more pleasure than leading these streams of water from one place to another and making them subservient to their purposes. In my travels in the country the inhabitants often called my attention to this branch of their operations, and I pleased them much when I expressed my admiration at the skill with which they executed it. The practice is not confined to the paddy fields; for I remember once, when superintending the planting of some large trees and shrubs in the garden of Messrs. Dent & Co. in Hong-kong, after I had given them a large supply of water at the time they were put into the ground, I desired the gardener to repeat the dose next morning. But, on the following day, when I returned to the spot I was surprised to find a little stream divided into many branches, and meandering amongst the roots of the newly planted trees. As there was no stream there before, I went up to examine its source, and found that it had been led from a neighbouring ravine; a work more easy than carrying a large supply of water in buckets, and at the same time more effectual.