VIII.
TRAMPS AFIELD.
On March 31st we took the 8 A. M. train on the
Shanghai-Nanking railway for Kunshan, situated thirty-two
miles west from Shanghai, to spend the day walking in
the fields. The fare, second class, was eighty cents,
Mexican. A third class ticket would have been forty cents and
a first class, $1.60, practically two cents, one cent and half
a cent, our currency, per mile. The second class fare to
Nanking, a distance of 193 miles, was $1.72, U. S.
currency, or a little less than one cent per mile. While the
car seats were not upholstered, the service was good.
Meals were served on the train in either foreign or Chinese
style, and tea, coffee or hot water to drink. Hot, wet face
cloths were regularly passed and many Chinese daily
newspapers were sold on the train, a traveler often buying
two.
In the vicinity of Kunshan a large area of farm land had been acquired by the French catholic mission at a purchase price of $40, Mexican, per mow, or at the rate of $103.20 per acre. This they rented to the Chinese.
It was here that we first saw, at close range, the details of using canal mud as a fertilizer, so extensively applied in China. Walking through the fields we came upon the scene in the middle section of Fig. 92 where, close on the right was such a reservoir as seen in Fig. 58. Men were in it, dipping up the mud which had accumulated over its bottom, pouring it on the bank in a field of windsor beans, and the thin mud was then over two feet deep at that side
