As I gazed admiringly along the miles and miles of ripening wheat and
golden rape, pink-flowering beans, interspersed everywhere with the
inevitable poppy, swaying gently as in a sea of all the dainty colors of
the rainbow, I did not wonder that Szech'wan had been called the Garden
of China. Greater or denser cultivation I had never seen. The
amphitheater-like hills smiled joyously in the first gentle touches of
spring and enriching green, each terrace being irrigated from the one
below by a small stream of water regulated in the most primitive manner
(the windlass driven by man power), and not a square inch lost. Even the
mud banks dividing these fertile areas are made to yield on the sides
cabbages and lettuces and on the tops wheat and poppy. There are no
fences. You see before you a forest of mountains, made a dark leaden
color by thick mists, from out of which gradually come the never-ending
pictures of green and purple and brown and yellow and gold, which roll
hither and thither under a cloudy sky in indescribable confusion. The
chain may commence in the south or the north in two or three soft,
slow-rising undulations, which trend away from you and form a vapory
background to the landscape.
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