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EAST ASIA.
walls and most of the houses were rebuilt towards the end of the last century, after
the place had been wasted by a great fire. Few towns cover a larger area, vast
suburbs stretching far beyond the enclosure, which is itself 12 miles in circuit.
Like most provincial capitals, it consists of a Chinese and Manchu quarter, of which
the former is by far the largest and wealthiest. Chingtu is the " Paris of China,"
the finest and most elegant city in the empire, with broad, straight, and regular
streets, lined by handsome wooden houses with gracefully carved facades. The red
sandstone arches erected at several points are also covered with fine sculptures in
relief, representing fabulous animals or scenes of social life. The natives have also
the reputation of being the most highly cultured and the greatest lovers of the
arts and sciences in China. The surrounding plain, one of the best-cultivated
tracts in the world, is well watered by countless irrigating
rills from the Min and
its tributaries. This district contains as many as eighteen other cities with the
rank of chew or hien, besides several other unwalled towns and villages with more
inhabitants than many commercial marts. A population of perhaps 4,000,000 is
crowded together in this basin, within an area of less than 2,500 square miles.
The capital is at once a great agricultural and industrial centre, with thousands of
hands engaged in weaving, dyeing, and fancy work. Some 36 miles to the south-
west stands Kiungchctc, at the foot of the mountains skirting the plains, where is
manufactured the best paper in China. In the Upper Min valley lies Sungpan-tiag,
near the Kansu frontier, which has a vast Mohammedan population, notwithstand-
ing its elevation of nearly 10,000 feet above the sea.
The road leading from Chingtu across several ranges north-eastwards to Shensi,
and known as the Kinniu-tao, or " Route of the Golden Ox," is said to have been
traced some twenty-three centuries ago, in order to connect the two kingdoms of
Tsin and Shu that is, of North China and Sechuen which were not yet grouped in
one empire. The highway from Chingtu-fu to the basin of the Yellow River
remained unfinished for six hundred years, when the road from Hanchung over the
Tsing-ling to Tingan was opened by the Sechuen Emperor Liupi, whom legendary
history has transformed to a sort of Chinese Hercules.
The Kinsha-kiang regions cannot be compared with the Min basin for the
importance of their urban populations. Yet even in this part of Sechuen there is
at least one large city never yet visited by any European, except possibly bv Marco
Polo. This is N/iif/i/ucii, the chief place in the flourishing valley of the Kienchang,
which joins the Yalung near the confluence of this river with the Kinsha-kiang.
The Chinese speak of this place and of the surrounding district as an earthly
paradise, presenting a marvellous contrast to the rugged mountains it enclosing on
all sides.
Pingnhan marks the extreme point reached by Blakiston during his exploration
of the Yang-tze. But a more important place is Sur/inc (Sui-fu), at the junction of
the Min and Kinsha-kiang. This is the entrepot for all the produce of Yunnan
exported to the interior of China, and here are manufactured mats noted for their
strength and pliancy. The coal mines above and below Suchew yield the best coal
in the whole Yang-tze basin. Farther down Lueheic, at the confluence of the