of which were located along the river. Absolutely the whole tree, including the roots and the needles, is saved and burned; no waste is permitted.
The up-river cargo of the Nanning was chiefly matting rush, taken on at Canton, tied in bundles like sheaves of wheat. It is grown upon the lower, newer delta lands by methods of culture similar to those applied to rice, Fig. 45 showing a field as seen in Japan.
The rushes were being taken to one of the country villages on a tributary of the Sikiang and the steamer was met by a flotilla of junks from this village, some forty-five miles up the stream, where the families live who do the weaving. On the return trip the flotilla again met the steamer with a cargo of the woven matting. In keeping record of packages transferred the Chinese use a simple and unique method. Each carrier, with his two bundles, received a pair of tally sticks. At the gang-plank sat a man with a tally-case divided into twenty compartments, each of which could receive five, but no more, tallies. As the bundles left the steamer the tallies were placed in the tally-case until it contained one hundred, when it was exchanged for another.
Wuchow is a city of some 65,000 inhabitants, standing back on the higher ground, not readily visible from the steamer landing nor from the approach on the river. On the foreground, across which stretched the anchor chains of the dock, was living a floating population, many in shelters less substantial than Indian wigwams, but engaged in a great variety of work, and many water buffalo had been tied for the night along the anchor chains. Before July much of this area would lie beneath the flood waters of the Sikiang.
Here a ship builder was using his simple, effective bow-brace, boring holes for the dowel pins in the planking for his ship, and another was bending the plank to the proper curvature. The bow-brace consisted of a bamboo stalk carrying the bit at one end and a shoulder rest at the other. Pressing the bit to its work with the shoulder, it was driven
