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340 on either side, and in this trench our carriage moved through mud and water nearly to the hubs.

Between Tientsin and Peking, in the early morning after a rain of the night before, we saw many farmers working their fields with the broad hoes, developing an earth mulch at the first possible moment to conserve their much needed moisture. Men were at work, as seen in Figs. 200 and 201, using long handled hoes, with blades nine by thirteen inches, hung so as to draw just under the surface, doing very effective work, permitting them to cover the ground rapidly.

Fig. 201. — Hoe used for shallow cultivation in developing an earth mulch. The blade is 13 inches long and 9 inches wide.

Walking further, we came upon six women in a field of wheat, gleaning the single heads which had prematurely ripened and broken over upon the ground between the rows soon to be harvested. Whether they were doing this as a privilege or as a task we do not know; they were strong, cheerful, reasonably dressed, hardly past middle life and it was nearly noon, yet not one of them had