Page:Farmers of forty centuries.djvu/432

414 government townships, there is a population of 1,752,042, or a density of 4.7 per acre, and the number of households of farmers was placed at 211,033, thus giving to each farmer's family an average of 1.75 acres, their chief industries being rice and silk culture.

Soon after leaving the Agricultural Experiment Station of Aichi prefecture at An Jo we crossed the large Yahagigawa, flowing between strong levees above the level of the rice fields. Mulberries, with burdock and other vegetables were growing upon all of the tables raised one to two feet above the rice paddies, and these features continued past Okasaki, Koda and Kamagori, where the hills in many places had been recently cut clean of the low forest growth and where we passed many large stacks of pine boughs tied in bundles for fuel. After passing Goyu sixty-five miles east from Nagoya, mulberry was the chief crop. Then came a plain country which had been graded and leveled at great cost of labor, the benches with their square shoulders standing three to four feet above the paddy fields; and after passing Toyohashi some distance we were surprised to cross a rather wide section of comparatively level land overgrown with pine and herbaceous plants which had evidently been cut and recut many times. Beyond Futagawa rice fields were laid out on what appeared to be similar land but with soil a little finer in texture, and still further along were other flat areas not cultivated.

At Maisaka quite half the cultivated fields appear to be in mulberry with ponds of lotus plants in low places, while at Hamamatsu the rice fields are interspersed with many square-shouldered tables raised three to four feet and occupied with mulberry or vegetables. As we passed upon the flood plain of the Tenryugawa, with its nearly dry bed of coarse gravel half a mile wide, the dwellings of farm villages were many of them surrounded with nearly solid, flat-topped, trimmed evergreen hedges nine to twelve feet high, of the umbrella pine, forming beautiful and effective screens.