better kind o f Scau-tcboo or burnt wine ; the chief ufe, however,
o f the molaffes is to preferve fruits and other vegetable productions
; and particularly the roots o f ginger, a conferve o f which
the Chinefe are remarkably fond.
The bed o f the river having, in the lapfe o f ages, fettled to
the depth o f twenty, thirty, or even forty feet below the general
level o f the country, it became neceffary to employ fome artificial
means o f obtaining the water for the purpofe, of irrigation.
The contrivance made ufe o f to raife it to the height o f the
banks was fimple and ingenious; and from hence it was conveyed
in fmall channels to every part o f the cane plantations.
O f the ufeful machine employed for this purpofes confiding
o f a bamboo wheel which I underftand has been adopted
in America, a view and lection may be feen among the plates
accompanying Sir George Staunton’s authentic account o f the
embaffy. I ihall therefore content myfelf with obferving in
this place that, the axis excepted, it is entirely conftrucl-ed o f
bamboo, without the afliftance o f a fingle nail or piece o f iron ;
that the expence o f making it is a mere trifle ; that in its operations
it requires no attendance, and that it will lift, to the
height o f forty feet, one hundred and fifty tons o f water
in the courfe o f twenty-four hours *\ Every plantation near
this part o f the river had its wheel and fome o f them tw o ;
* The water-wjieels ftillufed in Syria differ only from thofe of China, by
having Ioofe buckets fuipended at the circumference, inftead o f fixed tubes. “ The
“ wheels o f Hama,” fays Volney, « are thirty-two feet ih diameter. Troughs are
" fattened to the circumference, and fo difpofed as to fall in the river, and when
V they reach the vertex o f the wheel, difcharge the water into a refervoir.”
3 and
and the water ralfed by them was fometimes conveyed at once
into the plots o f canes and fometimes into refervoirs, out o f
which it was afterwards pumped, as occafion might require, by
the chain-pump and carried to thofe places where it might be
wanted along fmall channels coated with clay.
The women o f this province were more robuft than ordinary
and well fuited, by their ftrength and mufcular powers, to endure
the hard labour and drudgery o f the field, which feemed
to be their chief employment. This fort o f labour, however,
might be the caufe, : rather than the confequence, o f their extra-
qrdinary ftrength and mafcujine form. The habitual ufe o f
hard labour, to which the women are here brought up, fits
them beft to become the wives o f the peafantry in the neighbouring
provinces; and accordingly, when a Chinefe farmer is
defirous o f purchafing a working wife he makes his , offers in
Kiang-fee. It was here that we faw a woman yoked literally by-
traces to a plough, whilft the huiband or mafter had the lighter
talk o f holding it by one hand and drilling in the feed with the
.other. The exertion, o f labour, together with the conftant ex-
pofure to the weather, in a climate fituated under the twenty-
fifth to the twenty-ninth parallel o f latitude, have contributed
to render more coarfe and forbidding the features o f the fair fex
o f Kiang-fce, in the formation o f which, indeed, Nature had not
been too bountiful. Like the women o f the Malay nation, with
whom they njoft probably are derived from one common ftock,
they fixed their ftrong black hair clofe to the head by two metal
ikewers. Their drefs, in other refpecfts, was the fame as that
o f the men, and like thefe they wore ftraw fandals on their feet.
Thus