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348 than any to be found in the corn belt of the middle west, and these too planted with corn, kaoliang, wheat and beans, and with the low houses hidden in distant scattered clusters of trees dotting the wide plain on either side, with not a fence, and nothing to suggest a road anywhere in sight. We seemed to be moving through one vast field dotted with hundreds of busy men, a plowman here, and there a great cart hopelessly lost in the field so far as one could see any sign of road to guide their course.

Fig. 203.—Exportation of soy beans from Manchuria. Lwanchow, Chihli.

Some early crop appeared to have been harvested from areas alternating with those on the ground, and these were dotted with piles of the soil and manure compost, aggregating hundreds of tons, distributed over the fields but no doubt during the next three or four days these thousands of piles would have been worked into the soil and vanished from sight, to reappear after another crop and another year.

It was at Lwanchow that we met the out-going tide of soy beans destined for Japan and Europe, pouring in from the surrounding country in gunny sacks brought on heavy carts drawn by large mules, as seen in Fig. 203, and enormous quantities had been stacked in the open