wet soil.  If this working is not completely successful men enter the fields and tramp the surface until every twig and blade is submerged.  The middle section in this illustration has been fitted and transplanted; in front of it and on the left are two other fields once plowed but not fertilized; those far to the right have had the green manure applied and the ground plowed a second time but not finished, and in the immediate foreground the grass and boughs have been scattered but the second plowing is not yet done.

We passed men and bullocks coming from the hill lands loaded with this green herbage and as we proceeded towards Fusan more and more of the hill area was being made to contribute materials for green manure for the cultivated fields.  The foreground of Fig. 211 had been thus treated and so had the field in Fig. 212, where the man was engaged in tramping the dressing beneath the surface.  In very many cases this material was laid along the margin of the paddies; in other cases it had been taken upon the fields as soon as the grain was cut and was lying in piles among the bundles; while in still other cases the material for green manure had been carried between the rows while the grain was still standing, but nearly ready to harvest.  In some fields a full third of a bushel of the green stuff had been laid down at intervals of three feet over the whole area.  In other cases piles of ashes alternated with those of herbage, and again manure and ashes mixed had been distributed in alternate piles with the green manure.

In still other cases we saw untreated straw distributed through the fields awaiting application.  At Shindo this, straw had the appearance of having been dipped in or smeared with some mixture, apparently of mud and ashes or possibly of some compost which had been worked into a thin paste with water.

After passing Keizan, mountain herbage had been brought down from the hills in large bales on cleverly constructed racks saddled to the backs of bullocks, and in one field we saw a man who had just come to his little field with an enormous load borne upon his easel-like packing appliance.  Thus we find the Koreans also adopting the rice crop, which yields heavily under conditions of abundant water; we find them supplementing a heavy summer rainfall with water from their hills, and bringing to their fields besides both green herbage for humus and organic matter, and ashes derived from the fuel coming also from the hills, in these ways making good the unavoidable losses, through intense cropping.

The amount of forest growth in Korea, as we saw it, in proximity to the cultivated valleys, is nowhere large and is fairly represented in Figs. 210, 213 and 214.  There were clear evidences of periodic cutting and considerable, amounts of cordwood split from timber a foot through were being brought to the stations on the backs of cattle.  In some places there was evident and occasionally very serious soil erosion, as may be seen in Fig. 214, one such region being passed just before reaching Kinusan, but generally the hills are well rounded and covered with a low growth of shrubs and herbaceous plants.