Menonuts, such as that of Wu-tang, Viceroy of Szechuen, with respect to the timber to be procured for the repair of the Summer Palace at Yuen-ming-yuen, show how little reality there is in the superficial displays of progress on behalf of the Chinese Government. The high officers of State in attendance at the Palace can, in the year 1874, with the whole world open to them, think of no better means than an oppressive precedent of 1825 to procure wood for the repairs of the buildings destroyed by the French and English, and call on the provinces of the Hu, the Kwang, and Szechuen, each to provide 3,000 pieces of timber of large size for the work. Now, all residents in China know the extent to which the country has been denuded of timber by the short-sighted policy of Government and people alike, and all who have gone below the surface and studied more intimately the condition of the empire, know that the scarcity has been alarmingly increased within the last twenty years. In the year 1825, Wu-tang informed us of the difficulty experienced in obtaining the timber required. "Years were spent in dragging the timber over mountains and valleys, for which purpose it was necessary te construct roads at a great expenditure of labour. Much of the timber was injured in the course of transport, and had to be replaced and years elapsed before the supply called for was ready for shipment." Now in 1825 the ports of China had not been opened to the commerce of the world. In those days, besides, there were here and there forests which were capable of supplying the wood required. In 1874, foreign timber of larger size, and far superior quality to that so wastefully collected fifty years ago, can be had at a moment's notice at most of the treaty ports. Even if it were necessary to send an order abroad for some of the sizes required, Rangoon, Singapore, Australia, or the South Sea Islands would land the requisite material at Tientsin in fewer months than it took years in the former case to transport the timber from the secluded forests of China, and at a cost which, irrespective of the disturbance
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.