THE POPULATION OF THE EMPIRE.

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no country in the world is more fertile and capable of supporting a dense population than China. Every available spot of ground is brought under cultivation, and nearly all the land is made use of to provide food for man, pasture-fields being almost unknown. The masses of China eat very little animal food. What they do eat is mostly pork and fowls, the raising of which requires little or no waste of ground. The comparatively few horses and cattle and sheep which are found in the country are kept in stables, or graze upon the hill-tops, or are tethered by the sides of canals. Taking these facts into consideration, that an extended and exceedingly fertile country, under the highest state of cultivation, is taxed to its utmost capacity to supply the wants of a frugal and industrious people, and the statement that it contains as dense a population as three hundred to the square mile need excite no wonder or incredulity.

An independent proximate estimate of the population of China may be made from the basis of its cities. A few years since, nineteen contiguous cities were visited by two missionaries from Ningpo. One of these contained 300,000 inhabitants; ten of them from 50,000 to 100,000; and eight from 10,000 to 20,000. The average population would be about 60,000 each. If this tour had extended a few days' journey to the north, it would have included the cities Shao-hing and Hang-chau, the former containing about 800,000 and the latter 1,000,000 inhabitants, which would have raised the average not a little. Taking 60,000, however, as the average for the cities of the Chekiang province, and reducing the general average of the empire from 60,000 to 40,000, we will have for the cities of China alone 68,000,000. But we find under the jurisdiction of each city a number of large villages rivalling it in population. If we assume that the larger unwalled towns, to the number of one-tenth of the whole, contain double the population of the cities, we will have for the population of the cities and a small fraction of the unwalled towns 200,000,000. Regarding the almost innumerable vil

lages as containing only the same population as the cities, and a few of the larger villages, and we reach the result of 400,000,000, for the whole population. This estimate makes no pretensions to accuracy, but is intended to show how consistent the Chinese census is with facts, and how difficult it would be to fix upon any lower figures.

Every thing you see in China conveys the same impression of a country overburdened with a population which swarms about you wherever you go. The fields are everywhere full of laborers; in the mountainous districts you will see scores of terraces, rising one above another to the height of 500 or 1000 feet, and the hills cultivated in many places to their very tops. Pedestrians are everywhere seen in the roads and bypaths, the rivers and numerous canals are filled with boats, and a great variety of busy artisans ply their crafts in the noisy streets of the cities and villages.

The peculiarities of climate along the Chinese coast are due in a great measure to the northern and southern monsoons, the former prevailing with more or less uniformity during the winter and the latter during the summer months. These winds give a greater degree of heat in summer and of cold in winter than is experienced in the United States in corresponding latitudes. At Ningpo, situated in latitude thirty-one-about that of New Orleans-large quantities of ice are secured in the winter for summer use. It is, however, seldom more than an inch in thickness. In this part of China snow not unfrequently falls to the depth of six or eight inches, and the hills are sometimes covered with it for weeks in succession. In the northern provinces the winters are very severe. In the vicinity of Pekin, not only are the canals and rivers closed during the winter, but all commerce by sea is suspended during two or three months; while in the summer that part of China is very warm, producing sweet potatoes, peaches, and grapes in abundance. The period of the change. of the monsoon, when the two opposite currents are struggling with each other, is marked by a great fall of rain, and by the

PECULIARITIES OF CLIMATE.

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cyclones which are so much dreaded by mariners on the Chinese coast. The southern monsoon gradually loses its force in passing northward, and is not very marked above thirty or thirty-two degrees of latitude, though its influence is decidedly felt in July and August. With the exception of the summer months, the climate of the northern coast of China is remarkably dry; that of the southern coast is damp most of the year, especially during the months of May, June, and July.

In different parts of the country almost every variety of climate may be found, hot or cold, moist or dry, salubrious or malarious. The ports which until recently have been exclusively occupied as places of residence by Europeans have unfortunately been among the most insalubrious of the empire, not so much from the enervating effects of their southerly latitudes as from their local miasmatic influences, being situated in the rice-producing districts, and surrounded more or less by stagnant water during the summer months. Under the treaty of 1860, which opened new ports in the north and the interior, we have access to climates which will compare favorably with most parts of our own country.

The eighteen provinces present every conceivable variety of landscape-comprising valleys and alluvial plains, high table-lands, and regions noted for wild and picturesque mountain scenery. It is finely watered by numerous rivers. To say nothing of streams of less note,the River Yiang-ts flows through its entire length from west to east, and, receiving many tributaries from the northern and southern provinces, bears on its bosom the commerce of more than 150,000,000 of people. It passes through a very rich and populous region, and presents to the traveller natural scenery of varied beauty, and numerous unfamiliar objects curious and picturesque.

Several ports on this river are now open to foreign commerce, and vessels drawing more than twenty feet of water and from two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet long, are clearing from the port of Han-kao, six hundred miles in the interior, for London, Liverpool, and New York.

In the front of the accompanying engraving, and opposite the large city Wu-chang, which is seen on the opposite side of the "Great River" in the distance, is the site of the foreign settlement in Han-kow. Han-kow being a kind of suburb of Wuchang, and having no wall around it, is not found on any of the maps of China; though it has a population probably not less than 300,000. In the map accompanying this book the name of the city is incorrectly spelled Vu-chang.

THE GREAT IMPERIAL CANAL.

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CHAPTER II.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE COUNTRY AND ITS INHABITANTS-CON

TINUED.

Travelling.-Roads.-Streets.- Canals.- Boats.- Sculls.-Mud-slides.— Sedans or Kiau-ts.-Burden-bearers.-Beasts of Burden. -Mule-litters.-Productions of the Soil.-Different Varieties of Teas.-Vegetables.—Fruits.—Implements.--The Threshing-floors of Scripture.—The use of Fertilizers.-Style of Architecture and Materials used.-Firewalls in Cities.-No Stoves in Northern Houses.-Artisans.-Business Men.-Order and General Prosperity.

THE modes of travelling vary greatly in different parts of the empire. In many of the provinces, especially along the coast and in the south, canals take the place, for the most part, of roads. The great Imperial Canal, stretching from Hangchau, in Central China, to Pekin, a distance of six hundred miles, is often referred to by writers on China as one of the greatest of public works in any country, and as a striking evidence of the wisdom of the government and vast resources of the empire. This, however, is but one of the main arteries of canal communication, and its length is insignificant in comparison with the aggregate length of the other canals of the empire. I have no doubt that its length is equalled, if not exceeded, by that of the canals within the jurisdiction of some of the individual departmental or Fu cities. In the vicinity of Ningpo the country is supplied with a complete net-work of them, often intersecting each other at distances of one or two miles, or less. Farmers frequently have short branch canals running off to their houses, and the farm-boat takes the place of the farm-cart or wagon. Heavy-loaded passage and freight boats are seen plying in every direction. The ordinary rate of charge for passage, at the highest estimate, would be less than one-half of a cent per mile. A boat