]
Breakfast over, we jumped ashore again, and, desiring to conduct our
sight-seeing systematically, started for the fields. First we walked to
the foot of a hill a little distance off, where some men in short
cotton trousers and jackets were laying out a new plantation. The
ground was accurately marked off, and in one place the little plants,
only an inch or two in height, were just showing above the ground. In
another, the seeds--little round balls they looked like--were being
planted in the rows. Passing another field, where some men were at work
with their hoes in true Chinese style, stopping every few moments to
smoke their pipes, we came at last to where the plants had attained
some size and the actual picking was going on. The plants themselves
were from two to six feet high, according to age, and from repeated
cuttings down had grown into dense masses of small twigs. Many of them
were covered with little white flowers, somewhat similar to the
jasmine, and seeds inclosed in a casing not unlike that of the
hazel-nut, but thinner and full of oil. Charley thought they looked
like little laurel bushes; to me, those that had been well picked were
not unlike huckleberry bushes, only the leaves were, of course, a much
darker green.
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