Page:Farmers of forty centuries.djvu/429

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Indigo.
411

cash. The manufactured product from the reduced planting in 1907 was worth $1,304,610, forty-five per cent of which was the output of the rural population of the prefecture of Tokushima, which they could exchange for rice and other necessaries. The land in rice in this prefecture in 1907 was 73,816 acres, yielding 114,380,000 pounds, or more than 161 pounds to each man, woman and child, and there were 65,665 acres bearing other crops. Besides this there are 874,208 acres of mountain and hill land in the prefecture which supply fuel, fuel ashes and green manure for fertilizer; run-off water for irrigation; lumber and remunerative employment for service not needed in the fields.


Fig. 240.—Field of Japanese indigo, just outside the city of Kyoto.


The journey was continued from Kyoto July 7th, taking the route leading northeastward, skirting lake Biwa which we came upon suddenly on emerging from a tunnel as the train left Otani. At many places we passed water-wheels such as that seen in Fig. 241, all similarly set, busily turning, and usually twelve to sixteen feet in diameter but oftenest only as many inches thick. Until we had