268 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



flavour, though strong, is grown everywhere; it is rolled 

 up like cigars and smoked in pipes, every smoker carrying 

 the wrapper and fillings in his pouch. With the exception 

 of cotton, everything that grows in Eastern China grows 

 better in Szechuan : its mountains may be regarded as the 

 easternmost prolongation of the Himalayas, and certainly 

 its tea partakes very decidedly of the Assam character. 



Szechuan possesses an area almost exactly equivalent to 

 that of France; an even superior climate; a far larger 

 population, equally industrious and thrifty; a land delight- 

 fully accident'ee, and cultivatable to its highest slopes. Many 

 volumes might be written on the productions of this splendid 

 province, but the exigencies of space have compelled me to 

 limit myself to this rapid sketch. 



The mineral wealth of the country is as varied as it is 

 extensive. The whole copper supply of the empire has to 

 run the gauntlet of the Yang-tse rapids. Discouraged though 

 they be by the officials, we yet find iron-mines worked on a 

 small scale, at intervals along the river's course between 

 Wu-shan and Wan-hsien, a distance of a hundred miles. The 

 iron is brought down in the minute bars aflfected by the native 

 trade, by numerous small affluents on the left bank at and 

 between these two places. The sandstones of Szechuan are 

 largely impregnated with iron, the washings from which give 

 the red colour to the summer floods in the Hankow plain. 

 These floods, which reach their culminating point each year 

 on or about August i, seem clearly attributable to the 

 monsoon rains, and not mainly, as it is often stated, to the 

 melting of the Thibetan snows. On the other hand, that 

 mountainous region undoubtedly furnishes the golden sands 

 of which a fresh layer is deposited each summer, and care- 

 fully washed for on the sandbanks, laid dry each winter — as 

 far east as the Tung-ting Lake — and soon the rich matrix 



