Tie system of famine relief in North-China has arrived at such vast proportions that earnest attention ought to be devoted to the question how the people of that region are in future to be provided with the means of preventing the annual distress from which they suffer. The state of things in Honan, Anhui, Shantung, Shansi and Chihli is unique of its kind. There is no part of the world where a thickly populated country of this large extent is favoured with so little r The population has grown immensely during the last two centuries, while the supply of rain instead of remaining the same has probably grown much less. Rains of course mean food, and if the amount of food necessary for the increasing population can be provided without local rain, the people can live perfect ly well without rain as they do in Egypt. In Egypt the inhabitants support themselves by agriculture as they do in China, but the rain that is brought down by the Nile and combines with the other constituents of rice, wheat, and millet to make up the food on which the Egyptians live, falls in Abys-sinza. What the Nile is to Egypt the Yellow River ought to be made to the Tower course. This river is never known ravinees through which it flows in its
to dry wp, and by the methods of irrigation it can in its present bed be made to produce boundless blessings to the inhabitants residing on its banks. The mountains of Tibet where the Yellow River rises must be like those of Szechuan, richly beautiful in all picturesque features, well wooded and lovely to the eye. Here rains fall and here therefore is the reservoir where water is collected in sufficient abundance to supply all the millions of human beings on the plains of China with food.
The great advantage of a large and industrious population is that labour can be provided by the Government at
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.