At
certain seasons, numerous minute oysters may be seen sticking to the
shells of the old ones; and the Chinese may have thrown the emptied
shells into the sea, in the highly probable expectation of these minute
oysters continuing to live and grow. The circumstances in the text are
absurd additions, either from ignorance or imposition. - E.]
The chief employments of the people here are fishing and agriculture. In
fishing, they use several sorts of nets and lines as we do; but, as
there are great banks of mud in some places, the fishermen have
contrived a small frame, three or four feet long, not much larger than a
hen-trough, and a little elevated at each end, to enable them to go more
easily on these mud banks. Resting with one knee on the middle of one of
these frames, and leaning his arms on a cross stick raised breast high,
he uses the other foot on the mud to push the frame and himself
forwards.
In their agricultural operations, all their fields on which any thing is
to be cultivated, whether high or low, are formed into such plots or
beds as may admit of retaining water over them when the cultivator
thinks proper. The lands are tilled by ploughs drawn by one cow or
buffalo; and when it is intended to sow rice, the soil is remarkably
well prepared and cleared from all weeds, after which it is moistened
into the state of a pulp, and smoothed by a frame drawn across, when the
rice is sown very thick, and covered over with water, only to the height
of two or three inches.
