The people live in the valleys. Beside every spring of sufficient size stands a village surrounded by vineyards and by groves of apri cot, mulberry, fig, and poplar trees. Aside from a few patches of melons and onions there are few vegetable gardens. Each village, however, possesses broad, unfenced fields of pale yellow stubble where cattle are now browsing. Two months or more ago the grain was cut, and the circular threshing floors of smoothly packed earth were piled with golden wheat and paler straw, or perchance with barley. Then the grain was threshed by the feet of oxen and donkeys driven around and around over the straw. Now some of it is waiting to be carried home, for the Oriental does not hurry. In spite of its long stay in the open air, one sees no evidence that it has been wet by rain.
In the villages the houses are made either of sun-dried adobe bricks or of stones plastered with mud. Some have low pyramidal roofs covered with red tiles, but most of the people can afford only flat earthern roofs, which have to be rolled after every rain to keep them hard. The women, being Mohammedans, conceal their faces, but one occasionally gets glimpses of them at work grinding flour in hand mills, or doing other household tasks. The men and boys seem to spend most of their time loafing. As the traveler dismounts they spread a rug for him under the mulberry trees beside one of the little reservoirs that hold the limited water supply. Then they bring coffee from Mocha in Arabia, and wheat bread, mutton, melons, grapes, and the sour milk called "leben" or "yowort." At the base of the mountains on the edge of the great inner plain each of the larger valleys has a village at its mouth, and fields of dry stubble extend for miles. As the traveler proceeds across the plain, however, the villages and fields become less and less frequent, until finally a group of low black tents appears beside a well, with a flock of sheep and a drove of camels not far away. He has reached a region too dry for agriculture, and fit only for desert nomads, who wander with their animals in search of water and pasture.
The Trade that Might Flourish.—While riding through this coun try, you would perhaps say to yourself, "Not much chance to sell leather here. From the hides of their numerous animals the people can get all the leather they want, but this might be a good place to buy either undressed hides or wool. Not much market for hoes, either, for the vegetable gardens are small and grain does not need hoes, but these people ought to plow their broad fields with some thing better then wooden plows and reap them with machines instead of hand sickles. How good those melons were? We ought to have
that kind at home." Why Manufacturing Does not Flourish.—Then you might fall to wondering why manufacturers do not thrive when there seems to be so much unemployed labor. During the reaping season, and again in the fall when the seed is sown, the people work willingly but slowly from dawn till dusk, but they are idle. Partly because of the hot, monotonous summers and partly for other reasons, such as lack of education, the people are not sufficiently energetic, ambitious, and inventive to save up capital and build manufacturing plants which would keep them busy when there is not much farm work.
A Midsummer Visit to a Typical Monsoon Region in Eastern Asia: Transportation.—A visit to Shantung at the same season as our Aleppo visit would show a very different scene. Even at the steamer landing in Tsing-tau there are no carriages and animals. The only vehicles are those drawn or pushed by men. For passen gers there are jinrikishas, like overgrown baby carriages, while for freight and baggage there are wheelbarrows with the wheel in the center half way from front to back, instead of at the end. In the interior away from the few railroads, you would find it impossible; to hire even a wrikshaw," because there are no roads for these two wheeled vehicles. As there are no riding animals you would probably decide to walk and have your baggage carried on a wheelbarrow.
Density of Population.—In Shantung one meets twenty people to one in the Turkish province. There are villages everywhere, made of adobe as in Turkey. Unlike the Turkish villages, however, they are rarely surrounded by trees, and stand bare and gray in the midst of the fields. The mountain slopes are not given over to flocks and shepherds as in Turkey, but are covered with terraces, each of which is a little field banked up with a wall of stone or earth. Out on the plains in striking contrast to the Turkish province, the population is more dense than among the foothills. No room here for nomads and camels or even for many domestic animals. A cow or a horse needs several times as much land for its support as does a man. So numerous are the villages that there is not land enough to raise food for any animals except pigs and chickens, which do not need room for pasture, and can be fed on refuse.