IRRIGATION METHODS IN CHINA. 



BY GUY E. MITCHELL. 



Although the vast mobs which infest Pekin and the larger cities 

 of China, worked up to a state of frenzy and fanaticism, have rendered 

 impossible any satisfactory action by the available forces of the Pow- 

 ers, the great Chinese population proper is agricultural and naturally 

 extremely peaceful and peace-loving. Agriculture, however, is most 

 primitive and the wonder is how such an immense population can be 

 supported from the soil, until the great economy practiced in all things 

 is understood. On the Great Plain of China, every available foot of 

 land is utilized for growing something and every particle of fertility 

 returned to the soil. Waters are used for irrigation and in many 

 cases laboriously distributed over the fields. 



The Great Plain itself is one of the most wonderful sections of 

 the globe. It is about 700 miles in length and varies from 200 to 400 

 miles in width, occupying the northwestern part of the empire, and 

 containing over 200,000 square miles of wonderfully fertile soil. The 

 most interesting feature of this plain is its enormous population as it 

 supports, according to the census of 1812 not less than 177 million 

 human beings, making it the most densely settled of any part of the 

 world of the same size, its inhabitants amounting to nearly two thirds 

 of the entire population of Europe. 



The most wonderful feature in the physical geography of China 

 is the existence of a vast region of loess in this portion of the Empire. 

 Loess is a very solid but friable earth, brownish yellow in color and 

 is found in many places from 500 to 1000 feet deep. Tho loess hills 

 rise in terraces from 20 to several hundred feet in height. Every 

 atom of loess is perforated by small tubes after the manner of root 

 fibers only the direction of these little channels is always from above 

 downward so that cleavage to the loess mass is invariably vertical. 

 The loess region of China is perhaps the most broken country in the 

 world, with its sheer cliffs, and upright walls, terraces and deep cut 

 ravines. Owing to the ease with which it can be worked, caves made 

 at the bases of straight cliffs, afford homes to millions of people in the 

 densely populated northern provinces where the Boxers have thus far 

 been most active. Whole villages cluster together in carved out 

 chambers, some of which extend back more than 200 feet. The capa- 

 bilities of defense in a country such as this, where an invading army 

 must necessarily become lost and absolutely bewildered in the tangle 

 of interlacing ways and where the defenders may always remain con- 

 cealed or have innumerable means of escape is peculiarly significant 

 at this time when consideration is being to a conquest of China. 



