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TOPOGRAPHY. 125
which are here built for the navigation of the Sungari. The streets are entirely
paved with square wooden blocks or planks, and piles
of lumber obstruct the traffic
ashore, while the stream is covered with rafts. The neighbouring gold mines
are the scene of constant violence and bloodshed, which the Chinese authorities
endeavour to suppress with atrocious cruelty. When Palladius visited Girin he
had to pass through a line of stakes, each surmounted by a gory human head.
In the marshy and fever- stricken plains lying about the Nonni and Sungari
confluence the only place of any size is Bedinifh (Petuna), or Sincheng, which has
succeeded another town of the same name lying nearer to the junction. Here
converge the main routes of the two valleys, and a considerable trade is done,
especially with Kwanychrny-tz , or S'tangtu ; that is,
" Great Capital."
This town
lies farther south on the great highway to China, and is the natural mart of all the
nomad Mongol tribes of the Eastern Gobi steppes. But in this district the main
route leads directly north towards the Sungari. Along this line of busy traffic
lie the towns of Kitt/u-shu, Lnlin, and Ashe-ho
(Asher-ho). Opposite the confluence
the main stream is joined by the Khulan, and on a bluff commanding this triple
junction stands the town of Klnilan-chen.
The most northern Chinese city in the Sungari basin is Sansing, which lies on
the right bank between 'the two- rivers, Khurkha (Mutan) and Khung-ho, and
facing the mouth of a third. Sansing
is the old Islan-hala of the Manchus that
is, the city of the " Three Families" and its admirable situation at the junction of
four river valleys could not fail, in a more favourable climate,
to raise it to a
commercial centre of the first rank. But Sansing is exposed to the full fury of the
northern blasts, while in summer it is drenched by the heavy rains from the
monsoons, which. change the river banks into malarious swamps, flood the cultivated
tracts, and drive the people to take refuge in the upland valleys. Hence Sansing
has remained little more than a mart for the peltries brought hither by the Manchu
hunting tribes. Higher up the Khurkha valley is peopled by numerous colonists,
and here was founded the important town of Ninguta, in the midst of the fertile
valleys watered by the streams from the White Mountains. Ninguta occupies the
most convenient site in Chinese Manchuria for the Russian and Japanese trade ;
for the routes converge here, which run over easy passes across the Shan-alin range
east and north-east to the valleys of the Suifun and Tumen Rivers. Thus the com-
modious ports on the Gulf of Peter the Great are the natural outlets of the Ninguta
district. But since the Russian occupation of the maritime province the fiscal
measures of its new masters have resulted in the depopulation of the border-lands.
The main highway 'from Girin to Mukden, skirting
the foot of the volcanic
Taku-shan range, traverses several large places, such as Kali-chung, Kdiyuen,
and Ti'ling, or " Iron Mount," so named from a range of hills abounding in ores,
thanks to which Ti'ling has become the " Birmingham and Sheffield of Manchuria."
In the southern or Liao-he basin the chief place is Mukden, the Shinyang or
Fungtien of the Chinese, which is the present capital of the three Manchu
provinces. It lies in the midst of extremely fertile but treeless plains, watered by
an affluent of the Liao-he from the east, and it is regarded as a holy city, because