with some straw, burn all together.  This earth, being sifted fine, they mix with the seed, which they sow in holes made in straight lines, so that it grows in tufts or rows like the rice.  The field is divided into regular beds, well harrowed both before and after the seed is sown, which makes them resemble gardens.  The rice grounds are meliorated merely by letting water into them; but for the other grains, where the soil requires it, they use dung, night-soil, ashes, and the like.  For watering their fields, they use the machine mentioned by Martini in the preface to his Atlas, being entirely constructed of wood, and the same in principle with the chain-pump.

In order to procure salt, as all the shores are of mud instead of sand, they pare off in summer the superficial part of this mud, which has been overflowed by the sea-water, and lay it up in heaps, to be used in the following manner:  Having first dried it in the sun, and rubbed it into a fine powder, they dig a pit, the bottom of which is covered with straw, and from the bottom a hollow cane leads through the side of the pit to a jar standing below the level of the bottom.  They then fill the pit almost full of the dried salt mud, and pour on sea-water till it stands two or three inches above the top of the mud.  This sea-water drains through the mud, carrying the salt along with it from the mud as well as its own, and runs out into the jar much-saturated with salt; which is afterwards procured by boiling.

Sec.4. Of the famous Medicinal Root, called Hu-tchu-u.

Having last year seen, in a newspaper, some account of a singular root, brought from China by Father Fontaney, I shall inform you that I have seen this root since my arrival at Chuaan.  It is called Hu-tchu-n[333] by the Chinese, and they ascribe to it most wonderful virtues, such as prolonging life, and changing grey hair to black, by using its infusion by way of tea.  It is held in such high estimation as to be sold at a great price, as I have been told, from ten tael up to a thousand, or even two thousand tael-for a single root; for the larger it is, so much the greater is its fancied value and efficacy:  But the price is too high to allow me to try the experiment.  You will find it mentioned in the Medecina Sinica of Cleyer, No. 84; under the name of He-xeu-ti, according to the Portuguese orthography.  It is also figured in the 27th table of the plants which Mr Pettier had from me.  The following is the story of its discovery, which I will not warrant for gospel.

[Footnote 333:  This is probably the ginseng, so famed for its fancied virtues.—­E.]