As we passed on to other fields we found a mother and daughter transplanting sweet potatoes on carefully fitted ridges of nearly air-dry soil in a little field, the remnant of a table on a deeply eroded hillside, Fig. 124.  The husband was bringing water for moistening the soil from a deep ravine a quarter of a mile distant, carrying it on his shoulder in two buckets, Fig. 125, across an intervening gulch.  He had excavated four holes at intervals up the gulch and from these, with a broken gourd dipper mended with stitches, he filled his pails, bailing in succession from one to the other in regular rotation.

The daughter was transplanting.  Holding the slip with its tip between thumb and fingers, a strong forward stroke plowed a furrow in the mellow, dry soil; then, with a backward movement and a downward thrust, planted the slip, firmed the soil about it, leaving a depression in which the mother poured about a pint of water from another gourd dipper.  After this water had soaked away, dry earth was drawn about the slip and firmed and looser earth drawn over this, the only tools being the naked hands and dipper.

The father and mother were dressed in coarse garb but the daughter was neatly clad, with delicate hands decorated with rings and a bracelet.  Neither of the women had bound feet.  There were ten in his family; and on adjacent similar areas they had small patches of wheat nearly ready for the harvest, all planted in hills, hoed, and in astonishingly vigorous condition considering the extreme drought which prevailed.  The potatoes were being planted under these extreme conditions in anticipation of the rainy season which then was fully due.  The summer before had been one of unusual drought, and famine was threatened.  The government had recently issued an edict that no sheep should be sold from the province, fearing they might be needed for food.  An old woman in one of the villages came out, as we walked through, and inquired of my interpreter if we had come to make it rain.  Such was the stress under which we found these people.

One of the large farmers, owning ten acres, stated that his usual yield of wheat in good season was 160 catty per mow, equivalent to 21.3 bushels per acre.  He was expecting the current season not more than one half this amount.  As a fertilizer he used a prepared earth compost which we shall describe later, mixing it with the grain and sowing in the hills with the seed, applying about 5333 pounds per acre, which he valued, in our currency, at $8.60, or $3.22 per ton.  A pile of such prepared compost is seen in Fig. 126, ready to be transferred to the field.  The views show with what cleanliness the yard is kept and with what care all animal waste is saved.  The cow and donkey are the work team, such as was being used by the plowman referred to in Fig. 122.  The mounds in the background of the lower view are graves; the fence behind the animals is made from the stems of the large millet, kaoliang, while that at the right of the donkey is made of earth, both indicative of the scarcity of lumber.  The buildings, too, are thatched and their walls are of earth plastered with an earthen mortar worked up with chaff.