Rich land has been exhausted to get a few harvests.
Then drought ensues, the most dreaded of all calamities in China, because bad harvests, dearth, and famine follow in its train.
Two harvests a year; villages resonant and gay; a stately poverty; all Sunday the sound of guitars, dancing, castanets, love-making; houses clean and bright; storks in the belfries.
Its inhabitants, who had been completely prevented by the continual attacks of the savages from gathering in their harvests, had died of hunger, or had perished in endeavouring to reach the Spanish settlements in Chili.