648 Forestry Quarterly. 



the notorious sandstorms in the northern plain. The Yellow 

 River, Hwang Ho, "China's Sorrow," once, records show, flow- 

 ing through a rich fertile valley, its tributary hills well wooded, 

 is to-day a broad moving quicksand with a small amount of water 

 for most of the year, but when the floodtide comes the whole face 

 of the landscape may be changed. In 1886, some 20,000 square 

 miles of the most densely populated, most intensively cultivated 

 lands were flooded, thousands of villages and towns were wiped 

 out and not less than two million (according to other seven mil- 

 lion) people were drowned. Moisture conditions are so uncer- 

 tain that seven years out of ten are said to be more or less famine 

 years. 



While the needs of a protective soil cover impress themselves 

 most forcibly, the lack of wood is a no less serious trouble, and one 

 wonders why with a population so dense, with labor so cheap and 

 efficient (15 to 30 cents a day), with a market for everything in 

 the wood line at the door (to-day roots of grass and bushes serve 

 for fuel), and prices for all forest products higher than with us, 

 the wastelands are not being re-forested. 



General Conditions. 



In dealing with such a vast empire as China, the study of any 

 one phase of her economic conditions cannot but be fragmentary 

 unless years can be devoted to such study; and even then, owing 

 to lack of facilities of communication and the impossibility of 

 travel in many districts, the results could hardly be considered 

 accurate. Most of the data in the following pages, especially 

 those on the timber trade of China was obtained in a three 

 months' tour through the principal commercial centers of China, 

 made from September to December, 1909, by personal obser- 

 vations amplified by interviews with men who were thoroughly 

 acquainted with conditions in various parts of the empire — such 

 men being mostly missionaries resident in the district, engineers, 

 and so on. 



The Chinese Empire stretches from 10° to 53° north latitude, 

 and from 74° to 134° longitude east of Greenwich. It is bounded 

 on the north and northwest by Siberia, on the west by Russian 

 Turkestan, on the southwest by Hindustan, on the south and east 

 by Tongking and the Pacific Ocean, and on the northeast by 



