which is well known for the quantity of gold it produces. What is called the Kin-shakeang, or "Gold-sand River," is a portion of the great Keang in the earlier part of its course; and the largest amount of the precious metal is said to come from Ly-keangfoo, near that river, and Yoong-châng-foo, on the borders of Ava. In Yun-nân also are worked silver mines; and indeed the great quantities of silver brought to Lintin for many years past, to be exchanged for opium and exported to India, have proved that there must be abundant sources in the empire. Ordinary copper, whence the base metal coin of the country is made, comes from Yun-nân and Kuei-chow. A good deal of this is called Tze-lae, or natural," as being found in the beds of torrents. An abundance of malachite, or green copper ore, is obtained near the great lake in Hoo-kuâng, and is pulverized by the Chinese for green paint. The famous pe-tung, or white copper, which takes a polish not unlike silver, is said to come exclusively from Yun-nân. A considerable quantity of quicksilver is obtained in Kuei-chow; and there is a rich mine of tutenague, or zinc, in Hoo-pě.

IN connexion with the subject of this chapter, it may be as well to make some general remarks on the climate and meteorology of such parts of the country as have come under the observation of Europeans. A distinguishing feature, the unusual excess in which heat and cold prevail in some parts of the empire at opposite seasons, as well as the low average of the thermometer round the year, in comparison with the latitude, has been already noticed and explained as resulting, according

1 Vol. i. p. 50.

to the investigations of Humboldt, from the position of China on the eastern side of a great continent. Although Peking is nearly a degree to the south of Naples-the latitude of the former place being 39° 54', of the latter, 40° 50' the mean temperature of Peking is only 54° of Farhenheit, while that of Naples is 63°. But as the thermometer at the Chinese capital sinks much lower during winter than at Naples, so in summer does rise somewhat higher; the rivers are said to be frozen for three or four months together, from December to March; while during the

last embassy in September, 1816, we experienced a heat of between ninety and one hundred degrees in the shade. Now it is well known that Naples and other countries in the extreme south of Europe are strangers to such a degree of long continued cold, and not often visited by such heats. Europe, observes Humboldt, may be considered altogether as the western part of a great continent, and therefore subject to all the influence which causes the western sides of continents to be warmer than the eastern; and at the same time more temperate, or less subject to excesses of both heat and cold, but principally the latter.

The neighbourhood of Canton, and of other cities on the coast, to the sea causes this

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tendency to be greatly modified; and indeed the climate of the larger portion of the empire seems to be, upon the whole, less subject to extremes than that of the capital. Taking it all the year round, and with the exception of some oppressive heats from June to September, it may be questioned whether a much better climate exists anywhere than that of Canton and Macao; the former place being as low as latitude 23° 8' north, and the latter about a degree to the south of it. The mean annual temperature of those places is what commonly prevails in the 30th parallel. It is surprising to contrast their meteorological averages with those of Calcutta, a city which stands very nearly in the same latitude. The following table was the result of observations

made at Canton during a series of years (the average fall of rain was taken from a register kept, for sixteen years, by Mr. Beale at Macao), by which it appears that about 704o of Fahrenheit is the average temperature of Canton and Macao, and that the months of October and April give nearly the mean heat of the year. The total fall of rain varies greatly from one year to another, and has sometimes been known to reach ninety inches and upwards. Vegetation is checked in the interval from November to February, not less by the dryness than by the coldness of the atmosphere; the three winter months being known sometimes

to elapse with scarcely a drop of rain. The north-east monsoon, which commences about September, blows strongest during the above period, and begins to yield to the opposite monsoon in March. About that time the southerly winds come charged with the moisture which they have acquired in their passage over the sea through warm latitudes; and this moisture is suddenly condensed into thick fogs as it comes in contact with the land of China, which has been cooled down to a low temperature by the long continued northerly winds. The latent heat given out, by the rapid distillation of this steam into

fluid, produces the sudden advance of temperature which takes place about March; and its effect is immediately perceptible in the stimulus given to vegetation of all kinds, by this union of warmth with moisture.

With the progressive increase of heat and evaporation those rains commence, which tend so greatly to mitigate the effects of the sun's rays in tropical climates. In the month of May the fall of rain has been known to exceed twenty inches, being more than a fourth of all the year, and this keeps down the temperature to the moderate average marked for that month; while, in Calcutta, there is no portion of the year more dreaded than May. At length the increasing altitude of the sun, which becomes just vertical at Canton about the solstice, and the accumulated heat of the earth, bring on the burning months of July, August, and September, which are the most oppressive and exhausting of the whole year. The extreme rarefaction of the

atmosphere now begins to operate as one of the causes tending to the production of those terrible hurricanes, or rushes of wind, called typhoons (Tae-foong-"great wind "), which are justly dreaded by the inhabitants of southern China; but which chiefly devastate the coasts of Haenân, and do not extend much to the north of Canton.

The name typhoon, in itself a corruption of the Chinese term, bears a singular (though we must suppose an accidental) resemblance to the Greek ruwv. The Chinese sailors and boatmen have from habit become very clever prognosticators of these hurricanes, and indeed of all kinds of weather, without the aid of the barometer. They have a common saying, that "lightning in the east denotes fine weatherin the west, successive showers,-in the south, continuous rain-in the north, violent wind." It is quite certain that typhoons always commence in the north quarter. The principal circumstances to be observed concerning these hurricanes are, the state of the barometer previous to and during the storm, the influence of the moon, and the localities in which they prevail. The barometer falls slowly for many hours, often a whole day before the commencement, the mercury sometimes descending nearly to twenty-seven inches during the progress of the gale; and its rising is a sure

sign of subsidence. Another sign of the approaching storm is the long and heavy swell which rolls in upon the sea-beach, without any apparent cause, for some time before the hurricane begins; but which may perhaps be explained by so much of the usual pressure of the atmosphere (equal to two inches, or a fifteenth part of the mercurial column) being removed from the surface of the water; and this circumstance may likewise partly account for the overwhelming seas that are so much dreaded by ships encountering the typhoons. The most likely periods for their occurrence are August and September, just at the change of the moon. The gale commences at north, goes about to east and south, and finishes at west. Typhoons seldom prevail below 10° north latitude, or above the parallel in which Canton lies; and their range west and east is from the shores of Cochin-China to 130° longitude.

About Haenân, and the strait which divides that large island from the main land, the typhoons are so dreadful that temples are built expressly to deprecate them, and on the 5th day of the fitfh moon the magistrates offer sacrifices. In addition to the prognostics already noticed, they are preceded by a thick, muddy appearance of the atmosphere, and a show of unusual disquiet among the sea-fowl. Thunder is considered as a symptom of mitigation. They seldom reach forty-eight hours, and their duration is commonly confined to twenty-four. In the year 1831, on or about the 21st September, a typhoon blew with unusual fury at Macao. It commenced at night and by three or four o'clock in the afternoon of the following day, the whole place was one scene of devastation, probably not unlike the ruin occasioned by the torna does in the West Indies. Houses were unroofed, ships stranded, and the solid granite quay in front of the town completely levelled. Great blocks of stone, some tons in weight, were carried a considerable way up acclivities, which might appear impossible, but for the fact that the heaviest bodies are less ponderous in water than out of it, by the weight of the fluid they displace.

No small portion of the destruction occasioned by typhoons extends to the productions of agriculture and husbandry. The wind

which blows from the south and east, being charged with salt water, has a withering effect on all the vegetation near the coast; trees are broken or rooted up; and rivers, already swelled by the summer rains, are driven in floods over the low lands which rice-cultivation chiefly occupies. But, besides hurricanes and floods, other disasters attend on Chinese husbandry. Long continued droughts are not unfrequent, assailing various portions of the empire by turns. The ravages of locusts are particularly dreaded in the north. Père Bouvet, in a journey from Peking to Canton during the year 1693, observed that "in Shantung the country was laid waste by a frightful multitude of grass-hoppers, called from their colour Hoûng-choong, "the yellow insect.' The air was full of them, and the earth covered in such a manner, even in the great roads, that our horses could not move without raising clouds of them at every step, The insects had entirely destroyed the hopes of the harvest in this country: the mischief, however, did not extend far, for within a league of the place where this havoc was made, all was perfectly free."The plague of locusts is said to occur when great floods have been followed by a long drought.

These are some of the chief natural discouragements to agriculture in a country which possesses a large proportion of fertile lands, watered by the innumerable branches of those two great trunks, the Yellow River and the Keâng. There is perhaps no point relating to China that has been more over-stated than the condition of its agriculture was by the early missionaries; probably in consequence of the contrast which it presented to the existing state of husbandry in Europe, at the time when they wrote. The opinion formed by Dr. Abel was, "that much as the Chinese may excel in obtaining abundant products from land naturally fertile, they are much behind some other nations in the art of improving that which is naturally barren." They exhibit, however, great perseverence and skill, about the neighbourhood of Canton, in gaining muddy flats from the water by extensive and well-constructed embankments. The subject on which most exaggeration has prevailed is the system of terrace-cultivation, which certainly exists in hilly districts, and

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may even be seen from the vessels at Whampoa, but is by no means carried to the marvellous extent that has been supposed. "While passing through the mountainous provinces of the empire, we naturally looked for that far-famed terrace-cultivation which had led to the notion of China being one vast garden, with hills terraced from the base to the summit. The wild and wooded tracts which were occasionally passed, at length convinced us that they do not often attempt to cultivate a surface naturally sterile or difficult, except in the immediate vicinity of towns; and that the terracing of hills is generally confined to those lower situations where an accumulation of their degraded surface affords a soil naturally productive."

The following is a summary view of the different sorts of cultivation observed by our embassies from Peking to Canton. Upon first landing on the shores of the Gulf of Pechely, the extensive alluvial flats along the river leading to the capital exhibited a dreary waste, with only occasional patches of cultivation, confined chiefly to the Holcus, or tall millet, and small clumps of trees surrounding houses or temples. The banks of the river sometimes alone showed traces of of tillage, and even these, where of a sandy nature, remained barren. This continued until we approached the immediate neighbourhood of Tien-tsin, which terminates the grand canal to the north, and between which city and the sea the whole country is nearly an unreclaimed marsh, the inhabitants bearing in their general appearance the proofs of its unhealthiness. This is perhaps the best safeguard from an invading force on the side of the coast. After passing Tien-tsin considerable improvement was observed towards Peking, and various additions to the number of cultivated plants. Besides the Holcus, beans were grown, with the Sesamum orientale, from which thay extract an esculent oil, and the Ricinus communis, or castor-oil plant; but, above all, the pe-tsae, which is conveyed even to Canton. The trees comprised elms, willows, and a species of ash. The fields were not divided by any sort of hedge, but, as in every other part of the empire, by narrow ditches or drains, or by a ridge serving for a pathway.