[Illustration: 123.--CHINESE AGRICULTURE.]
"Water in this province is as little neglected as the land:
"Pisciculture is practised on a large scale and in the most intelligent manner. When spring returns, a quantity of vendors of fish spawn perambulate the country to sell this precious spat to the pond owners. The eggs, fecundated by the milt, are carried about in small barrels full of damp moss. These spawn-sellers are followed by hawkers of young fry, skilful divers who catch in very fine nets the new born fish reposing in the holes in the river beds. These fry are reared in special ponds, and disseminated when they have grown bigger in the lakes and larger pieces of water. The Chinese have succeeded in rearing and preserving in artificial basins the most interesting and most productive species of their rivers. In the immense lakes close to the Temple of Heaven at Peking, they rear gold fish, a kind of bream weighing sometimes as much as twenty-five pounds, carp, and the celebrated _kia-yu_, a domestic fish. Morning and evening the keepers bring herbs and grains for the fish, which greedily eat them, and which soon reach a considerable size, thanks to this fattening diet. A lake managed in this way is a greater source of revenue to its owner than the most fruitful fields.
"The sea-shore at the mouth of the Peï-ho is covered with parks to hold the fish at low water. These are made of several lengths of blue cotton stuff stretched on a cane framework, which is fastened to a quantity of small stakes. This framework folds in any direction like the leaves of a screen. A drag net is also used by the inhabitants of the coast. Soles, sea toads, bream, gold fish, whiting, cod and a quantity of other fish are caught in the gulf of Pe-tche-li. Many cetaceous fish are also found there, dolphins, several kinds of sharks, amongst them the tiger shark (_Squalus tigrinus_), whose striped and spotted skin is used in several manufactures, and a large species of turtle.
"River fishing, with which we are better acquainted, is followed in several ingenious fashions. There is trained cormorant fishing, fly fishing, harpoon fishing, rod fishing, and net fishing; dams are also placed across the streams at the travelling periods of migratory fish. The Pei-ho, crowded with fishermen, presents a most lively appearance; on its surface you see large boats containing whole families; the women occupied in mending the nets, in making osier fishing-rods, in cleaning and salting the day's catch, and in carrying in vases the fish they wish to keep alive; the little children, with their waists girdled with a life belt of pigs' bladders, running about and climbing like cats up the masts and the rigging; the men dropping their large nets perpendicularly into the water, and easily raising them again by a piece of ingenious mechanism consisting of a wooden counterpoise on which they lean the whole weight of their body (fig. 124), others watching their nets lying at the bottom of the stream, their whereabouts indicated by the wooden floats that are bobbing up and down here and there; others again descending the river with the current and harpooning the larger fish with a harpoon fastened to the wrist by a strong cord. To avoid alarming their prey, they have invented a kind of raft, made of a couple of beams fastened together with wooden rungs ladderwise; the stem is pointed, and in the stern, which is square, a paddle is kept with which they steer themselves. By a wonderful piece of equilibrium they manage to keep in an upright position, their feet on different rungs, with one hand stretched out grasping the harpoon, and their head extended to catch a sight of the fish as it sleeps in the sunshine on the top of the water. It is a stirring sight to see five or six fishermen abreast, descending with the current on these frail barks. They wear a broad-brimmed straw hat, and their clothing consists of a waterproof jerkin of woven cane, and a pair of drawers made of small pieces of reed stitched together. Their naked arms and legs are muscular and bronzed, their countenance is resolute, and its calm expression shows that they are inured to danger. Although it often happens that the harpooned fish, more powerful than the harpooner, makes the latter lose his balance and tumble into the water, when his only means of safety lie in cutting the rope fastened to his wrist to save himself from being dragged under, accidents are seldom heard of, for all are excellent swimmers. At night a strange noise is heard on the river, lighted up with resin torches; the fishermen rush about the stream beating wooden drums to drive the fish towards the spots where they have stretched their nets."