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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Fig. 28. Coolies carrying Freight along a Mountain Trail which has been 

 partly washed out by a turbulent stream. 



chandise. Over the mountain passes, however, and in many of the 

 smaller valleys, roads are so narrow that carts can not be used, and so 

 here pack animals, particularly horses and mules, are substituted. The 

 traveler in this part of China is often reminded of his proximity to 

 Mongolia by the frequent sight of camels. They are nevertheless not 

 indigenous beasts of burden and the inhabitants themselves do not 

 use them. 



In consequence of the swampy state which prevailed in this part of 

 China far back in the Carboniferous period, thick deposits of coal were 

 formed. These are now exposed in the deep valley slopes between beds 

 of limestone and sandstone, and the circumstance has made Shansi 

 province the principal coal-producing district of China. The coal is 

 mined by very primitive methods and as there is still no adequate 

 system of railroads in this or any other part of the empire, the product 

 can be transported only in carts or on pack animals. Either of these 

 modes of carriage is so expensive that it becomes unprofitable to trans- 

 port the coal more than 60 to 100 miles from the mine, and so the 

 denizens of a great part of northern China, where fuel is scarce and the 

 winters are severe, are no more able to obtain it than as if the United 

 States contained the only coal fields in the world. The advantages that 

 will accrue from the building of railroads in northern China are many, 

 but one of the greatest will be the wide distribution of this essential fuel. 



