The prospect for the wheat crop is universally good all through this region. If nothing unforeseen occurs to damage it, they will, in less than mouth, be ring the finest crop of wheat they have reaped for a goodly number of yours.
The "Patching Merit" Society. was much impressed on this trip with some of the efforts at public improvements, In several placus we found that the people had constructed quite devout roads through low places where during the rainy season the roads would be quite under water. They throw up the road twenty to thirty feet wide and about two feet above the surrounding land with a deep ditch ch side. OF course it is not very scientifically done, but it will be a great improvement over dragging through mud, submerged a foot or two under water. They do not understand making the roads higher in the middle than the sides and so they do not di well, Ifiud on enquiry that these roads are often built by society called the "P; kung Hui" or " Patching Merit Society. They do this work to lay up merit for themselves. Some of them come in large crowds for a hundred li and bring their own food. The local people furnish them fuel only. In many directions from this city in spring and autumn, the roads are quite good for bicycle, or even a foreign buggy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.