Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/674

656 action on the ship. It is also capable of being moved up and down, so as to increase or diminish the extent of the submerged surface. In some junks, it can be let down below the bottom of the vessel, and this property permits the craft to be handled very rapidly, and within spaces in which our otherwise better ships can not turn. The ta-tsang is divided into close compartments, each of which has its particular use; and has two masts, one in the center and the other toward the stern, each carrying a square bamboo-leaf sail. The sails are furled by letting down the upper yard, but are difficult to manage in bad weather, on account of their large size; so that, when at sea, it is deemed prudent to carry only half-sail. These boats are within the reach only of the aristocrats of the sea. The boats of the common fishermen are much smaller and more manageable. The most curious among them is the one which is called the "white jump." It is a long shallop, drawing but little water, and furnished on one side with a broad board painted white, which is fixed so as to slope toward the water. The boats only go out in clear moonlight nights, when the light reflected from the white surface attracts the fish, and they try to leap upon the plank. But they usually leap too far and fall into the boat.

With their nets, hooks, harpoons, and "white jumps," the fishermen of Swatow and Ningpo capture so many victims that there would be danger of their being killed to no purpose, had not Chinese industry found a way to transport them for long distances, to where they may make regal repasts for epicurean mandarins. The fishermen of Ningpo preserve their catches in ice, which they manage, notwithstanding the mildness of the climate, to get made on the spot. The Chinese processes for making ice are servile imitations of those of Nature. The rice-fields are the factories. When the cold begins to be felt, the flats are covered, by the aid of pumps, with a very thin bed of water. The ice which forms during the night is broken up every morning by coolies, who carry it, carefully cleaned from adhering mud, to the ice-houses, and then flood the fields again. The ice-houses are simple in construction, but capacious; for the climate of Ningpo is too mild to permit ice to be formed every year, and the proprietors are required by law to store in them enough to last three years. The ice-house consists of a vast quadrilateral, inclosed in walls made of stones cemented with mud, rising some twenty or twenty-five feet above the ground. The faces of the walls are thickly plastered, and the whole is then covered with heavy bamboo-matting, which is supported by a framework also of bamboo. The ice-houses of the north are smaller and less solidly constructed, for thick ice forms there abundantly every winter, and is more easily kept through the summer. In the vicinity of the capital, the ditch which anciently inclosed its domain is still well enough preserved in some places to serve as an ice-pond, and the ice-houses are built near its banks.

The fishermen also require large quantities of salt, and this is