MINERALS OF THE PACIFIC LITTORAL. 401 



partly briquetted and partly coked — a splendid coke it was — ^placed 

 on rafts and floated down tlie river to the city. When we saw for 

 ourselves that really magnificent coal occurred along a main road 

 within 300 miles of the city, and that the cost of coolie labour to 

 carry it turaed the scale in favour of perhaps the poorest coal seam 

 ever worked by man, we could grasp the importance of caiTiage as a 

 factor in mining. 



China is a densely populated country, and all its cultivable soil 

 has long ago been denuded of timber, so that coal is a necessity for 

 industrial and domestic purposes. Such large quantities are obviously 

 required for copper and iron smelting and brine evaporation that I 

 am inclined seriously to doubt the correctness of the British official 

 estimate of the coal production of China (9,032,660 metric tons for 

 rD06). Be this as it may, the needs of the nidigenous population will 

 be the only limit of Chinese coal production until the' — perhaps not 

 far distant — ^time when a network of railways brings the interior into 

 communication with the Pacific. 



A few foreign concessions are held, such as the coal mines of the 

 Pekin Syndicate in Shan si, and those of the Chinese Engineering and 

 Mining Co. at Kai ping, near Tien t'sin. The latter has six or eight 

 seams of bituminous coal of workable thickness, one of them 35 ft. 

 This colliery produced from 1881 to 1889 inclusive 6,552,570 tons. 

 The German province of Shantung contains coal seams up to 2J metres, 

 in thickness. 



Although bituminous coal is plentiful, anthracite is still more 

 widely distributed throughout China. I have seen immense deposits 

 of lignite in the province of Yunnan extensively employed in the 

 evaporation of brine. 



43ur knowledge of the geology of China is naturally imperfect, but 

 coalfields of Carboniferous and Triassic age have been recognised, and 

 doubtless Cretaceous and Tertiary coals are represented. 



China, owing t-o difficulties of inland transport, is an importer 

 of coal from Japan and Australia. The contribution of the latter,, 

 through Hong Kong, in 1906, was 70,708 tons. In 1907, Hong Kong- 

 only took 63,623 of Australian coal, but Chinese ports took 41,058. 



French Lvdg-Chixa is a considerable producer of coal. In 1906 

 tlie output of the Hongay Colliery (emplopng 3,000 men) was 230,980 

 tons, of which 106,289 tons were briquetted, some of the briquettes 

 being sent to Hong Kong. The Kebao Colliery produced about 6,000, 

 and the Schoebelin Colliery about 5,000 tons. The total output of 

 the province is given at 315,000 tons, including 19,000 of lignite. 



The Dutch possessions of Netherlands-India produced a total of 

 389.000 metric tons of coal in 1906; 277,097 of this came from the 

 Government Colliery, at Ombilien, in Sumatra, which is connected by 

 rail with Padang. Coal is also worked in the Sedan district of Java. 

 Apparently the output does not supply home requirements, since Java 

 was an importer of 66,542 long tons from Australia in 1906, and of 

 37,734 in 1907. 



British Borneo produced 62,974 metric tons of coal in 1906, and 

 South-east Borneo (Dutch) 111,909 tons. A large proportion of the 

 output is used for bunkering. 



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