Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/96



HERE are several features in the canal system of China, especially of the Imperial or Grand Canal, which can be studied with profit by the people of the United States. One of these is the use of the canal for the production of food in addition to its uses as a means of transportation. Allied to this is the use of the muck which gathers at the bottom of the waterway for fertilization. Another is the use of every particle of plant life growing in and around the canal for various purposes.

The Chinese secure a vast quantity of food of one sort or another from their canals. To appreciate the exact situation with respect to the waterways, it must be realized that the canals of China cover the plain country with a network of water. Leading from the Grand Canal in each direction are smaller canals, and from these lead still smaller canals, until there is hardly a single tract of 40 acres which is not reached by some sort of a ditch, generally capable of carrying good-sized boats. The first reason for this great network is the needs of rice cultivation. During practically all of the growing season for rice the fields are flooded. Wherever a natural waterway can be made to irrigate the rice fields it is used, but, of course, from these to the canals or larger rivers there must be waterways. Where natural streams cannot thus be adapted the Chinese lead water in canals or ditches to the edge of their fields and raise it to the fields of rice by the foot-power carriers which have been described so often by tourist writers. However the water is supplied to the rice, it is evident that there must be a waterway leading to the field and back to a principal stream, which is generally a branch canal. These waterways naturally take up a considerable portion of the land, and the Chinese make as profitable use of them as of the land itself.

The first use of the waterways is for fishing. The quantity of fish taken from the canals of China annually is immense. The Chinese have no artificial fish hatcheries, but the supply of fish is maintained at a high point by the fact that the flooded rice fields act as hatcheries and as hiding places for the young fish until they are large enough to look out for themselves. In the United States this fish propagation annex to the canals is probably neither possible nor needful in view of the work done by the state and national bureaus; but in China it is nothing less than providential.

Along the canals in China at any time may be found boatmen gathering muck from the bottom of the canal. This muck is taken in much the same manner that oysters are taken by hand on the Atlantic coast. In place of tongs are large, bag-like devices on crossed bamboo poles, which take in a large quantity of the ooze at once. This is emptied into the boat, and the process is repeated until the boatman has a load, when he will proceed to some neighboring farm and empty the muck, either directly on his fields — especially around the mulberry trees, which are raised for the silk-worms — or in a pool, where it is taken later to the fields. From this muck the Chinese farmer will generally secure enough shellfish to pay him for his work, and the fertilizer is clear gain. The fertilizer thus secured is valuable. It is rich in nitrogen and potash and has abundant humus elements. This dredging of the