SINO-MONGOLIAN FRONTIER 



timber, large or small, if they can get a good price, 

 and as young pines are in continual demand for 

 rafters and small beams in building operations, 

 the young trees are ruthlessly cut down, leaving 

 the once-smiling hillside denuded of spinneys and 

 copses — weary wastes of trampled under-brush, 

 dotted over with stumps, and littered with lopped 

 off branches and bark slivers. 



Once while spending a week in the wooded 

 area of Sheng-yeh in the hills west of T'ai-yiian 

 Fu, I made a rough estimate of the number of 

 young pines that were daily being taken out to be 

 sold in T'ai-yiian Fu for rafters. Two hundred 

 donkeys and mules, carrying on an average 

 thirty sapling pines apiece, passed our camp each 

 day. This had been going on for a month, and 

 would go on for another, so that about three 

 hundred and sixty thousand young trees were 

 cut down in that district alone that summer. 

 There is no reason why the rafters should not 

 have been cut from stout planks of large timber, 

 leaving the young pines to attain a reasonable size 

 before being cut down. This instance serves to 

 show the utter thriftlessness and waste of Nature's 

 resources indulged in by the Chinese in regard to 

 their timber supplies. It is strange that such 

 should be the case with the Chinese, who in other 

 respects get the very most out of the soil they 

 cultivate ; but this sad state of affairs must be 

 attributed to bad government, rather than to 



217 



