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TOPOGRAPHY. 123
and settled elements, and their dialect is now current throughout the whole of
Manchuria. Those from Shansi are chiefly itinerant dealers, hawkers, hucksters,
money-lenders, and bankers. They betray a remarkable talent for acquiring
languages, in their dealings with a stranger always conversing in his language,
unless it happens to be Manchu. This they affect greatly to despise, and have
the less need to learn it that Chinese is now everywhere understood by the natives.
These Shansi traders are gradually acquiring all the substance of the land. In their
flat-roofed Manchu houses the place of honour is taken by Laoyeh and Tsa'ikin, the
gods of wealth, whom they worship most sedulously.
Thanks to its fertility and temperate climate, South Manchuria yields a great
variety of agricultural produce. The Chinese breed swine and cultivate wheat,
barley, maize, millet, besides the "yellow pea" (Soya
from which
hispidaj, they
extract a sweet oil used as a condiment, exporting the refuse to China as manure.
Notwithstanding the severe winters, the hot summers enable them to grow a species
of indigo, besides cotton and the vine, carefully protecting the roots with straw
and earth during the cold season. The mulberry and oak are planted for the sake
of the silkworm, of which there are several varieties, not only yielding the precious
fibre, but also supplying the table with its greatest delicacy. As in Mongolia, the
imperial edicts against opium are a dead letter, and the bright bloom of the poppy
is everywhere intermingled with the other crops. Lastly, the Manchu tobacco,
especially that grown in the Girin district, is famous throughout the empire. The
practice of tobacco-smoking spread originally from Manchuria to Japan, and thence
to China about the time of the conquest. But the Manchus still remain the
greatest smokers in the empire. Some Chinese peasants in the Usuri valley also
cultivate ginseng,- which the Manchus call orotha, or " first of plants," and which
fetches its weight in gold in China. Its cultivation was formerly reserved as a
monopoly by the Manchus, and the line of willow palisades is said to have been
originally erected in order to prevent the Mandzi from penetrating into the forests
abounding in ginseng. But the trade has now passed altogether into the hands of
the Mandzi, who either cultivate or procure it in the wild state. The latter is much
preferred to the garden produce.
Till recently the only important local industries were the preparation of vegetable
oils, and of brandy distilled from sorgho. The Manchus of both sexes drink this
spirit, " to the forgetfulness of good and evil," as they express it. Thousands are
now also occupied in the gold mines, and according to the official returns, over
30,000 were employed about the middle of this century at the Wanlagu
washings, on the Upper Suifun. But the coal and iron mines of South Manchuria
promise to become a still more productive
source of national wealth. Thanks to
these varied resources, Liaotung has already become much richer than many
provinces in the interior of the empire.
TOPOGRAPHY.
The only Manchurian town on the right bank of the Amur is Aigun (A'ikhun),
which is by far the most populous in the whole valley of the Helun-kiang, or