wool itself is certainly on the spot, and it will be interesting to see whether 

 the enterprise succeeds, or fails, as all other large financial speculations 

 undertaken and controlled by the Chinese have hitherto done. Lan-chou Fu, 

 though throbbing with life and energy, owes its importance, not to any of the 

 industries already mentioned, but to its geographical position and official rank. 

 It forms the regular stopping-place and exchange for a vast amount of traffic, 

 and countless commerce-laden caravans, situated as it is at the point where 

 the main road from Sinkiang, Western Mongolia, Northern Tibet, and Siberia 

 enters China proper. The administrative area of Lan-chou is greater than 

 that of any other Chinese city except Peking. Its Viceroy controls an area of 

 over 750,000 square miles, embracing the whole of Sinkiang, as well as Kansu 

 and Shensi, or Sh^n-kan (as the two provinces in combination are called), and 

 containing a population of about twenty millions. 



The population of Lan-chou Fu is largely made up of Mohammedans, 

 who are viewed with suspicion by the officials. In theory they are not allowed 

 to reside within the walls of the city, but only on the north bank of the river. 

 This regulation, like so many other laws and regulations in China, is 

 practically a dead letter. Since the quelling of the Mohammedan rebellion in 

 1878, Sinkiang, or "The New Dominion" as Chinese Turkestan is called, has 

 been rapidly peopled with settlers from other provinces, and is in consequence 

 steadily increasing in importance, and in trade with China generally, and with 

 Siberia. 



No place in China offers better opportunity than does Lan-chou of 

 studying and comparing the various types that go to form the great Celestial 

 Empire. The heavily-built Mongol rubs shoulders with the wild and savage- 

 looking Sifan (Tibetan), or the Turco-Mongol from Kashgar ; here a 

 Chinaman from one of the southern provinces, easily distinguishable by his 

 short stature, slight figure, and sallow skin ; there a man from Ssuch'uan, 

 with characteristic turban surmounting the equally characteristic moon-face. 

 A Kansu Mohammedan with long curly beard, and clear-cut features, may be 

 seen haggling with a broad-nosed, dull-faced native of the province ; or a hot- 

 headed, rowdy carter from Honan, quarrelling over two grains of sorghum 

 found in a manger, with a placid, but canny Shansi muleteer. 



62 



