in many years a slight snow falls in the winter, to gather it into bottles, in which they suppose its precious virtues will be preserved after it melts, and be an efficacious remedy for fevers. "No country," says truly a recent writer,1 "presents greater diversities in its physical geography, productions and natural history, whether we regard its verdant and cultivated plains or its sterile and solitary deserts, its mountains and its valleys, its gigantic rivers, its cities teeming with intelligent and civilized inhabitants, or its mountain fastnesses and its forests, the abodes of wild beasts or marauding banditti."

In its general aspect China presents a series of river basins, or broad valleys of rivers, and of low lands along the sea-coast, divided by ranges of hills, which rise in many places to a very considerable elevation. Yun-nan, the south-western province, is exceedingly mountainous. The chief range sends out two branches eastward, one of which separates the valley of the Si-kiang river from the coasts of the Gulf of Tung-king; the other separates it from the valley of the Yang-tsz-kiang river and its affluents, whose basins are themselves divided by ranges which diverge from each other and from the coasts of the East sea. The valley of the Yang-tsz-kiang is separated from that of the Hwang-ho by a stretch of high land, which trends eastward from the Pih-ling mountains on the borders of Tartary, but which, terminating before it reaches the coast, leaves a broad alluvial plain between the mouths of these two great rivers. The remaining portion of the country lying between the Hwang-ho and Gulf of Pe-che-lee consists of the basin

1 The Rev. W. ELLIS, Introduction to Gutzlaff's Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China.

of the Pei-ho and the Yu-ho, having the hills of Shantung province on the south, and a cross range on the west, and communicating with the basin of the Hwang-ho by an opening at the angle formed by the two ranges. The appearance of even that portion of the country which has been traversed during the last century by Europeans and Americans is exceedingly diversified. Between Canton and Peking, a distance of twelve hundred miles, travelers have observed nearly every variety of surface, but each variety very remarkably disposed in large, broad masses. At first they have passed over a great, continuous plain; then for days over precipitous mountains, naked and unvaried, and for the remainder of their journey through lakes, swamps and morasses, or across extended sandy plains. There is a constant succession of large villages, towns and cities, with considerable navigable rivers, communicating with each other by means of artificial canals. Both canals and rivers are crowded with boats and barges. Hedge-rows and trees are scarce. Generally the surface of the country rises in terraces from the sea. As yet, its geology is very imperfectly known. China, however, has been well mapped. "The scientific skill of the Jesuit missionaries accomplished a survey of the whole on trigonometrical principles, so admirably correct as to admit of little improvement; and, with the exception of the British possessions in India, there is no part of Asia so well laid down as China."

Since the time of the Jesuits' survey, however, an alteration has taken place in the divisions of the country;

1 Sir JOHN FRANCIS DAVIS, The Chinese; A General Description of China and its Inhabitants.

the provinces, which then consisted of fifteen in all, were increased, by the sub-division of three of the largest, to eighteen; and another has been added of late years, carved out of the hereditary possessions of the reigning dynasty in Manchuria. The name Shih-pih Sang, or the Eighteen Provinces, is the popular name of the empire.

The two principal rivers of China occupy a very high rank. The Yang-tsz-kiang and the great Hwang-ho, or Yellow river, surpass all the rivers of Europe and Asia, and are second only to the Amazon and the Mississipi in America. The Yang-tsz-kiang, or the "Son of the Ocean," rises in Kokonor, not far from the sources of the Yellow river. Making a circuitous course, and receiving the tribute of innumerable streams and the superfluous waters of two immense lakes (the Tungting-hu and the Po-yang-hu), it flows with a strong current past Nanking into the ocean, which it reaches under the thirty-second parallel of latitude.

The Yellow river also rises in the country of Kokonor; but while the Yang-tsz-kiang turns to the south, the Yellow river strikes off abruptly to the north, passes across the Great Wall, making an elbow around the territory of the Ortous, then strikes back and again crosses the Great Wall, whence it flows due south and forms the boundary of Shan-si and Shen-si, from which boundary it turns sharply to the east, and, until recently, reached the ocean in latitude 34°. The Rev. Dr. W. A. P. Martin, an American missionary, who has been appointed a professor in the University at Peking, reports that it has of late cut a new channel for itself, probably during some great inundation; starting north-east below

the city of Kai-fung, it has pushed its way to the Gulf of Pe-che-lee, at a point four degrees farther north. The stream of the Yellow river is so excessively rapid as to be hardly navigable throughout the greater part of its course. It carries along with it a prodigious quantity of yellow mud in a state of solution, and its frequent floods occasion great damage to the country, and expense to the government in maintaining artificial embankments. But its waters fill numerous canals, which are furnished with locks, and carry fertility to many districts which would otherwise be dry and sterile. As for the internal commerce of the empire, the Chinese are rendered almost entirely independent of the rivers and of coast navigation by their Imperial Canal, which, in point of extent and magnitude of undertaking, is, like the Great Wall, unrivaled by any other work of the kind in the known world.

The flat, sandy and unproductive province in which Peking is situated offers, according to universal report, little that is worthy of notice. The vast plateau, or elevated plain, which surrounds that capital, is entirely devoid of trees, but wood is procured from the nearest hills and mountains of Tartary. The provinces at the mouth of the Yang-tsz-kiang are described as the richest provinces in all China. They are famous for their silks and japanned goods, made principally at Su-chau, a very ancient city. Nanking, the capital of Kiang-su, and at one time of the whole empire, measures seventeen miles in circumference; but only a corner of this vast area is now occupied by the habitations of men, the city having suffered greatly in the wars with the Tartars, and from its occupation by the Tai-ping rebels, who slaughtered a vast

multitude, and also in consequence of the removal of the court and capital to Peking. In the district of Hwuichau-fu, the most southern part of the province, is grown the best green tea; the soil in which the tea-plants are reared is a decomposition of granite, abounding in felspar, as is proved by the soil being extensively used in the manufacture of fine porcelain. Thus, as Davis observes, the same soil produces the tea and the cups from which it is drank.

The adjoining province of Kiang-si is described as being, in natural scenery and climate, the most delightful part of the empire. Here the Po-yang lake, in size approaching the character of an inland sea, spreads its broad waters, and exhibits on its west side a long framework of strikingly beautiful mountain scenery.

The maritime province of Chi-kiang competes with the great provinces north and west of it in the production of silk and the extent of its plantations of young mulberrytrees, which are constantly lopped and renewed as the most certain way of improving the silk spun by the worms which feed on the leaves. The younger the tree, the more tender the leaves; and the more tender the leaves, the finer the silk. It is by want of attention to this rule that silk, in several parts of the continent of Europe and in various Asiatic countries, has deteriorated in quality. The principal city of this province is the celebrated Hang-chau, close to the famous lake Si-hu. This beautiful lake is about six miles in circumference; its water is quite limpid and almost overspread with the beautiful water-lily. It figures continually in Chinese tales, poems, apothegms, similes and songs, and is held as a place sacred to pleasure and enjoyment. Its exten