out to the eastward. The thundering awful noise of the mountain, mingled with the monstrous roar of the lava flowing over the surface, became so terrible, that dismay now yielded to despair.

The first shock of an earthquake was felt about this time, and was followed by a shower of cinders, which continued falling with a hissing noise for upwards of two hours. About three, A. M., stones of a small size began to fall. The coruscations, roaring and crackling of the mountain, at this time exceeded all that had previously taken place. The eyes were struck with blindness, and the ears were stunned to deafness with the confusion of sounds. The rain of stones continued for about an hour, when it was succeeded by cinders and ashes. During the whole of this time, the island was in a state of continued undulation, not agitated by any shocks, but rather like a solid substance swimming in water kept in motion.

The morning of Friday dawned like the day of doom. A gloomy shadow enveloped the mountain, and a dismal haze, with black sulphureous clouds, hung over the sea. In the afternoon, the voice of the mountain became silent, but flames continued to issue from the summit for several days. The depth of volcanic matter in some places was fourteen inches but near the town not above half an inch.

[Abridged from SIR ANDREW HALLIDAY's Work
on THE WEST INDIES.]

THE POMEGRANATE. (Punica granatum.) THE Pomegranate in its wild state is a shrub, about eight or ten feet in height, extremely bushy, and covered with spines; but in a cultivated state it has attained nearly twice this size, particularly in the South of Europe. The flowers, which are tolerably large, are of a beautiful red colour, and nearly without a footstalk; the fruit which succeeds the blossom is, in the wild plant, about the size of a walnut, but in the cultivated varieties it exceeds that of a large apple. The fruit, when ripe, is covered with a hard rind, and contains numerous seeds, each surrounded with a pulp of a pleasant acid flavour, and contained in a small cell. The Pomegranate is believed to

have been brought originally from Northern Africa, and from the country near Carthage; from this is supposed to have arisen its Latin name of Punica, meaning Carthaginian. At present it is found in a wild as well as in a cultivated state in the greatest part of the South of Europe, and also in the Levant. The beautiful colour of the blossom of the Pomegranate, and the refreshing nature of the pulp contained in the fruit, were the cause of much attention being paid to its cultivation, even by the ancients; Pliny, the Roman naturalist, mentions six varieties, the fruit of the most highly prized of which, consisted entirely of pulp, being quite without seeds. The moderns reckon three varieties cultivated for the sake of the fruit, namely, that with an acid fruit, the second, in which the pulp is of a sweetish acid, and another in which it is perfectly sweet.

But there are many varieties cultivated for the sake of the flowers, which are of various colours, some striped, some famous for their size, and others for being double. In the northern parts of Europe, the Pomegranate is only cultivated for the sake of its flowers, the fruit being small and unpalatable, and even when cultivated it must be kept in the greenhouse for the greater portion of the year.

This shrub is supposed, under favourable circumstances, to reach a great age; some specimens are, or were, in the orangery at Versailles, which were reported to be from two to three hundred years of

age.

The pulp of the Pomegranate is much used in medicine in those countries where it abounds, as a liquid and as a syrup in cases of fever, and the shell of the fruit is said to be employed, on the coast of Barbary, in the preparation of yellow morocco.

The Pomegranate is found in America as well as Europe, and it is said, that in Peru, they sometimes occur of an enormous size; when one of extraordinary dimensions is found, the Spaniards carry it in procession at some of their religious festivals. It was held in much estimation by the ancients, and in a temple in the island of Euboea, there was formerly a celebrated statue of Juno, made of gold and ivory, which held a pomegranate in one hand, and a sceptre in the other; it was also a symbol of Proserpine.

Magazine.

CHINA. No. VII.

THE PEASANTRY OF CHINA.

AMONG the Chinese, the pursuit of agriculture is esteemed a very honourable occupation: it is, indeed, second only to the pursuit of learning, the cultivators of the soil ranking next to the cultivators of the mind, in the scale of national importance. The bulk of the population of the country is engaged in this honourable pursuit. China is essentially an agricultural country; and the extent of its resources in this respect, must have contributed to foster that contempt for foreign commerce which its rulers always profess to entertain, and which to a certain extent, is the natural consequence of the low estimation in which the native exchangers of commodities, commonly called merchants, are universally held there. Thus it may be truly said that the peasantry constitute the people: it is the peasantry whom the supreme authority studiously seeks to conciliate, and by

whom it is overawed.

It must be admitted that the Chinese are diligent and laborious agriculturists; whether they are entitled to the praise of being skilful ones is a very different question. It is the opinion of Mr. Barrow that the high opinion long entertained in Europe, of their skill in this respect, is a very erroneous He says that they certainly are industrious in an eminent degree, but that their labour does not VOL. X.

one.

always appear to be bestowed with judgment. The instruments, indeed, of which they make use, are incapable of performing the operations of husbandry to the greatest advantage. In the deepest and best soils, their plough seldom cuts to the depth of four inches, so that they sow from year to year on the same soil, without being able to turn up new earth, and to bury the worn-out mould to refresh itself. Supposing them, however, to be supplied with ploughs of the best construction, we can scarcely conceive that their mules, and asses, and old women, would be equal to the task of drawing them.

Upon the whole, (adds Mr. Barrow,) if I might venture to offer an opinion with respect to the merits of the Chinese as agriculturists, I should not hesitate to say, that let as much ground be given to one of their peasants as he and his family can work with the spade, and he will turn that piece of ground to more advantage, and produce from it more sustenance for the use of man, than any European whatsoever would be able to do; but let fifty or one hundred acres of the best land in China, be given to a farmer at a mean rent, so far from making out of it the value of three rents, on which our farmers usually calculate, he would scarcely be able to support his family after paying the expense of labour, that would be required to work the farm."

The mode in which agriculture is conducted by the Chinese, differs very much from that which we practise; and to a certain extent they may be said to have not yet got beyond that primitive state of things in which every man tills the ground for what 319

produce he v ants. The whole empire is divided into plots of one or two acres, separated by ditches, which serve as drains, or by narrow ridges, which are used as footpaths. These are, in most cases, cultivated by the owners themselves, who raise simply what they have need of for their own use, without dreaming of raising anything for the use of other persons, and their own profit. Even when these little plots are let on lease, the lessees act on the same principle; all are labourers and none farmers, each man performing the necessary operations on his own soil, with his own hands, and those of his family, to raise articles for his own and their use. Of course, this system is not universal: the inhabitants of towns must be provided with food by the inhabitants of the country; but the former are so small a body compared with the latter, that the extent to which the exception should be allowed is not very large. Mr. Barrow traces a resemblance between the state of things which, in this respect, prevails in China, to that which, in the olden time, prevailed among ourselves.

As in ancient times (he says), in our own country, when every cottager brewed his own beer; kept his own cow for milk and butter; bred his own sheep, the wool of which, being spun into yarn by his own family, was manufactured into cloth by the parish-weaver; and when every peasant raised the materials for his own web of hempen cloth; so it

still appears to be the case in China. Here, there are no great farmers, or monopolists of grain; nor can any individual, nor body of men, by any possibility, either glut the market, or withhold the produce of the ground, as may best suit their purpose. Each peasant is supposed by his industry to have the means of subsistence within himself; though it often happens that these means, from adverse circumstances, fail of producing the desired effect.

It is to the prevalence of this system that we must ascribe, in a great measure, the frequent famines, which are a source of so much affliction to China. If by any accident a failure of the crops should be general in a province, it has no relief to expect from the neighbouring provinces, nor any supplies from foreign countries. "In China, there are no great farmers who store their grain to throw into the market in seasons of scarcity." In such seasons, the only resource is that of the government opening its magazines, and restoring to the people that portion of their crop which it had demanded from them as the price of its protection. And this being originally only a tenth part, out of which the monthly subsistence of every officer and soldier had already been deducted, the remainder is seldom adequate to the wants of the people. Insurrection and rebellion ensue, and those who may escape the devouring scourge of famine, in all probability, fall by the sword. In such seasons, a whole province is sometimes depopulated; "wretched parents are reduced by imperious want to sell or destroy their offspring, and children to put an end by violence to the sufferings of their aged and infirm parents."

Nine-tenths of the peasantry of China may be considered as cottagers; and having few cattle, it can scarcely be expected that the whole country should be in the best possible state of cultivation. As horticulturists, they may perhaps be allowed a considerable share of merit; but on the great scale of agriculture, they are certainly not to be mentioned with many European nations. They have no knowledge of the modes of improvement practised in the various breeds of cattle; no instrument for breaking up, and preparing waste lands; no system for draining and reclaiming swamps and morasses; though that part of the country over which the grand communication is effected between the two extremities of the empire abounds with land of this nature, where population

is excessive, and where the multitudes of shipping that pass and repass, create a never-failing demand for grain, and other vegetable products. For want of this knowledge, a very considerable portion of the richest land, perhaps, in the whole empire, is suffered to remain a barren and unproductive waste. Judging from what he saw on the route of Lord Macartney's embassy, and from the accounts which have been given concerning the other parts of China, Mr. Barrow is inclined to think that nearly one-fourth part of the whole country consists of lakes, and low, sour, swampy grounds, which are totally uncultivated; and this fact, as he justly observes, will serve to explain in a more satisfactory way the frequent famines that occur, than does the supposition of the Jesuits, that they are owing to the circumstance of the nations bordering upon China to the west, being savage, and growing no corn. The waste lands belong to the emperor, in whom the whole territorial right is vested; but any person, on giving notice to the proper magistrate, may obtain a property therein, so long as he continues to pay such portion of the estimated produce as is required to be collected into the public magazines.

It was matter of general observation during Lord vince in which the capital stands, were more miserable, Macartney's embassy, that the peasantry in the protheir houses more mean and wretched, and their lands in a worse state of cultivation, than in any part of the country through which the route lay, with the single exception of the dreary and desolate neighbourhood of the Po-yang lake; and this remark agrees with the accounts given by the Dutch embassy of that part of Pe-che-li, through which they passed. Four mud walls, covered over with a thatch of reeds, or the straw of millet, or the stems of holcus, compose the dwellings of the peasantry, which are most commonly surrounded with clay walls, or with a fence made of the strong stems of the Holcus sorghum. A partition of matting divides the hovel into two apartments, each of which has a small opening in the wall to admit air and light; but one door generally serves as an entrance, which is often clothed with only a strong mat. A blue cotton jacket, and a pair of trowsers, a straw hat, and shoes of the same material, constitute the dress of the majority of the people. Their bedding is composed of a matting of reeds or bamboo, a cylindrical pillow of wood covered with leather, a kind of rug, or felt blanket, made of the hairy wool of the broad-tailed sheep, not spun and woven, but beat together, as in the process for making hats, and sometimes a mattress stuffed with wool, hair, or straw. The chief articles of furniture are a few basins of earthenware of the coarsest kind, a large iron pot, a frying-pan, and a portable stove. Chairs and tables are not required, for both men and women sit on their heels; and in this posture they surround the great iron pot, each with a basin in his hands, when they take their meals.

The meagre appearance of these poor people was sufficiently accounted for by the nature of their food, which consists chiefly of boiled rice, millet, or other grain, with the addition of onions or garlic, mixed sometimes with a few other vegetables, that by way of relish are fried in rancid oil. The oil which they use is extracted from a variety of plants, and among others, from that which yields the kind used medicinally by us under the denomination of Castor oil.

As well as I could understand, (says Mr. Barrow,) the seeds were first bruised, and then boiled in water, and the oil that floated on the surface was skimmed off. Our Florence oil they affected not to admire, having, as they said, no taste. The Chinese like the inhabitants of the