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.
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Fig. 213.—Rice paddies at head of mountain valley, with scattering pines in the hill lands beyond.
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
