Rice is grown almost wherever irrigation is possible.
The rice-fields are usually very small and of all shapes. A
quarter of an acre is a good-sized field. The rice crop planted in
June is not reaped till November, but in the meantime it needs to
be "puddled" three times, i.e. for all the people to turn into the
slush, and grub out all the weeds and tangled aquatic plants, which
weave themselves from tuft to tuft, and puddle up the mud afresh
round the roots. It grows in water till it is ripe, when the
fields are dried off. An acre of the best land produces annually
about fifty-four bushels of rice, and of the worst about thirty.
On the plain of Yedo, besides the nearly continuous villages along
the causewayed road, there are islands, as they may be called, of
villages surrounded by trees, and hundreds of pleasant oases on
which wheat ready for the sickle, onions, millet, beans, and peas,
were flourishing. There were lotus ponds too, in which the
glorious lily, Nelumbo nucifera, is being grown for the
sacrilegious purpose of being eaten! Its splendid classical leaves
are already a foot above the water.
After running cheerily for several miles my men bowled me into a
tea-house, where they ate and smoked while I sat in the garden,
which consisted of baked mud, smooth stepping-stones, a little pond
with some goldfish, a deformed pine, and a stone lantern.
