(uy ancnp. 3. LiTrtE, F.n.¢.%.)
Here in the open, on the edge of the find, or "prairie," of the Chinese—ot t Tibetan plateau,—the Ts'ao-ti, grass
over 10,000 fect above sea-level, and with the thermometer marking 38°, it is hard to realise that I left Chungking barely a month go, stewing in the damp heat of its close valley at a temperature of 98°. Were there a railway, such as brings Calcutta within 48 hours of Darjeeling and the Himalayan snows, the contrast' would be still more marked. However, as things are in China, the voyage hither, long and troublesome though it be, is not the least interesting part of the excursion—an interest which is lost in. the rapidity of railway travel—and so I do not regret being compelled to journey in whit our posterity will doubtless etl prehistoric
close and leisurely observations of the times, given that opportunity for those country and people which progress at a maximum daily rate of 20 miles English has enabled your correspondent to collate for the benefit (he trusts) of your numerous readers.
The land road from Chungking to the capital runs in a N.W. direction generally over hilly, broken, sandstone country, and in particular across four limestone "cross ranges" 2,000 to 3,000 feet high, such as traverse the Szechuan province throughout parallel folds of extraordinary regularity a S.W. to N.E.ly direction. The "road" as behoves a country of perpetual rain, is well-paved, being mostly a succession of steep stone staircases. Paddy fields are terraced up the slopes an-! only near the summits of the ranges crossed does one find a little wood and occasionally really picturesque scenery: the cultivation is so close and so persistent that no room is left for trees, hedges or grass-plots and only round the farm-houses are to be seen bamboo groves and a few fruit-trees, chiefly walnut and apricot. The noble Huang-ko, or banian, spreads its thick shade over isolated hill-tops and gaps, where ate local shrines and resting places for the tired coolies who take the place, as carriers, of the rail and waggon of the West; and by whom, in these Western provinces of Szechuan, Yunnan and Kueichou thousands of tons of merchandise of every description, native and foreign, are an-unally transported over these-busy provinces at enormous expense to the merchant and yielding but a bare and poor subsistence to the porter. As an instance, the freight from Chungking to Tali in the neighbouring province of Yunnan amounts to Tls. 120 per ton and this want of proper roads and not the much abused likin is the real obstacle to a more extensive trade and consequent greater consumption of " Western" manufactures.
Chengtu, the capital, is thus reached in eleven days, after lodging nearly every night in a walled city, the latter part of
Chungkiang or Central River of the Chéngthe journey being up the valley of the ta platens which "debouches into. the Yangtze at Luchou, about 100 miles above Chungking. We leave this valley at the flourishing city of Kienchou and cross the last intervening limestone range by a pass 2,500Kt. high, descending again 1,000 feet into the Chengtu plain—and at 30 li from this, its southern boundary, entering the walls of the city itself. I will not dwell long on Chengtu, through it is the residence of the Viceroy and an ancient city, with a great history. The modern town is, little more than a vast aggregation of streets in whic" the filth and rabble of Szechuan towns generally appear to reach their culminating point. It is hard to believe that this place is the Sindafu of Marco Polo which he paints in such glowing oolours. China must have shockingly degenerated in 600 years if (as there is little reason to doubt) the account given of the place by the great Venetian is at all accurate. Many and wide-sweeping are therevolutions which have devastated the province in the interval and it is probable that not a single building of the Han, Sung and Yuen periods is now in existence. At the present day the Chinese, rich and poor, appear to be living from hand to mouth, to build nothing beyond the absolutely necessary and to repair nothing; debilitated by the universal opium smoking and other vices, they appear to take no interest in anything beyond their daily material wants. Interesting at Chengtu is the large Manchu City the west end: to traverse it one emerges from the network of filthy alley-ways of the
ance of a wide park. Lhe scattered houses Chinese town into what hus the appear. of the Manchus are tumble-dowa enough but, surrounded by trees and grass-lawns, untidy though they he, the price has a sylvan and cheerful appearance; the women with their unbound feet are tall and robust, and the men, though. by all accounts a lizy, worthless lot, are healthier looking and more manly than the pallid creatures their Chinese neighbours.
Leaving Chengtu by its West gate, an almost perfectly straight and level path of 120 1i (30 miles according to Gill) takes one to the Northern boundary of the plateau and to the city of Kuan. Kuan-hsien is situated at the foot of the vast range of mountains (culminating in the snow peaks of Hsueh Paoting, 22,000 feet high) which rise abruptly from the northern edge of the plateau, and at the mouth of the gorge whence issues the celebrated Kuan-hsien river by which the Chengtu plateau is irrigated. This river, which has its source in the "grass-land," not far from the plice where I now write, flows through the frontier trading-town' of Sunp'an, and thence falls 7,000 feet in a distance of 200 miles to Kuanhsien, where it at length becomes navigable' and is known to foreign geographers as the Min river. By the Chinese it is regarded as the Takiang or main river, as distinguished from the Siaokiang or Kinsha-kiang with which it unites at Suifu, farther 200 miles below. The Chinese esteem this as the main river owing to the Granch, or Yangtze proper, a3 we call i, amount of trafic it carries, the longer
being practically unnavigable above Ping-shan, whence it flows in stupendous gorges through wild, practically uninhabited, mountains.
The Chengtu plain is irrigated in all directions by the water distributed at
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.