Note 593 — Chapter X · —Man's Relation To The Water

When advancing civilization has eliminated the need for this form of protection, water-dwellers may survive or reappear in old and relatively over-populated countries, as we find them universally on the rivers of China and less often in Farther India. Here they present the phenomenon of human life overflowing from the land to the streams of the country; because these, as highways of commerce, afford a means of livelihood, even apart from the food supply in their fish, and offer an unclaimed bit of the earth's surface for a floating home. Canton has 250,000 inhabitants living on boats and rafts moored in the river, and finding occupation in the vast inland navigation of the Empire, or in the trade which it brings to this port of the Si-kiang. Some of the boats accommodate large families, together with modest poultry farms, crowded together under their low bamboo sheds. Others are handsome wooden residences ornamented with plants, and yet others are pleasure resorts with their professional singing girls.593 In the lakes and swamp-bordered rivers of southern Shantung, a considerable fishing population is found living in boats, while the land shows few inhabitants. This population enjoys freedom from taxation and unrestricted use of the rivers and fisheries. To vary their scant and monotonous diet, they construct floating gardens on rafts of bamboo covered with earth, on which they plant onions and garlic and which they tow behind their boats. They also raise hundreds of ducks, which are trained to go into the water to feed and return at a signal,594 thus expanding the resources of their river life. Bangkok has all its business district afloat on the Menam River—shops, lumber yards, eating-houses and merchants' dwellings. Even the street vendor's cart is a small boat, paddled in and out among the larger junks.595