GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 



Manchuria. Its People, Resources, and 



Recent History. By Alexander Hosie. 



Illustrated. Pp. 293. 6 by 9 inches. 



New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 



1904. 



The present volume was published in 

 England several years ago and now in 

 revised form appears in America for the 

 first time. It is the standard work on 

 Manchuria, the author having been the 

 British consul at Niuchwang from 1894 

 to 1897, and again in 1899 and 1900. Mr 

 Hosie gives an excellent description of 

 the country and especially of its agri- 

 cultural wealth and possibilities. 



The standard of education in Man- 

 churia, from a Chinese point of view, is 

 not of a very high order, and compara- 

 tively few literary honors have fallen 

 to its inhabitants ; this is largely due 

 to the fact that the population in the 

 country districts is sparse^ scattered 

 over a very large area, so that educa- 

 tional facilities are not yet so well or- 

 ganized as in China proper. The Man- 

 chus form only 10 per cent of the 

 population. Intellectually the Manchu 

 is no match for the Chinese, as he lacks 

 the intelligence and capacity which are 

 characteristic of the latter. 



The domestic commerce of Manchuria 

 is enormous. On the road from Mukden 

 and Tie-ling to the north the author met 

 thousands and thousands of carts loaded 

 with merchandise. 



' ' I have traveled in different parts of 

 China, I have seen the great salt and 

 piece-goods traffic between Ssu-ch'uan, 

 Kwei-Chow, and Yunnan, but I never 

 saw a sight which from its magnitude 

 impressed me so much with the vast 

 trade of China as the carrying trade from 

 north to south in Manchuria. Until late 

 in the afternoon, when, owing to a snow- 

 storm, we had to abandon the possibility 

 of making the city of K'ai-yuan Hsien 

 that night, we met at least a thousand 

 carts heavily laden with the produce of 



the interior, including beans, tobacco, 

 abutilon hemp, dressed pigs, skins, and 

 large droves of black pigs, all bound 

 south. If we take the average team to 

 have numbered five animals, we met 

 some five thousand animals in one day. 

 At one place, where a difficult gully had 

 to be crossed, there was at least one mile 

 of carts, three deep, waiting their turn 

 to pass it. Numbers of men and boys 

 were to be seen on the roads vying with 

 each other in collecting the droppings of 

 animals, which they scooped into wicker 

 baskets. Much valuable manure is thus 

 collected and utilized in the adjoining 

 fields." 



Probably not more than one-fifth of 

 the whole arable land of Manchuria is 

 at present under cultivation. 



The present colonists are of them- 

 selves unable to cope with the land they 

 have taken up, and labor is yearly im- 

 ported from the northern provinces of 

 China, especially Shan-tung and Chihli, 

 to till, sow, and reap. From Chefoo 

 alone more than twenty thousand Chi- 

 nese laborers come to Niuchwang every 

 spring by steamer and distribute them- 

 selves all over Manchuria and eastern 

 Mongolia. 



The most important cereal grown in 

 Manchuria is the tall millet (Kao-liang) , 

 or Holcus sorghum L. It is the staple 

 food of the population and the principal 

 grain feed of the numerous animals en- 

 gaged in the farmwork and in the im- 

 mense carrying trade of the three prov- 

 inces. The natives boil the millet for an 

 hour into a soft, pulpy mass. "It is 

 then scooped into bowls and eaten with 

 boiled, fresh, or pickled vegetables, with 

 the aid of chopsticks, just like rice. No 

 salt or other seasoning is added to the 

 millet while being boiled, and the taste 

 is very insipid. An ordinary servant 

 consumes two pounds of millet per day, 

 while a hard-working man will, it is al- 

 leged, consume double that quantity. 



