Although China is traversed in all directions by roads, they are usually mere tracks, or at best footpaths, along which the transport of goods is a tedious and difficult undertaking. It was owing to the imperfect means of communication that such a fearful mortality attended the famines in Shansi, Honan, and Shantung, as well as the famine in Kiangsi in 1903, when the scarcity of food was so great that in numberless instances men even publicly sold their wives and children when powerless to meet the responsibility for feeding them. The enormous mineral wealth of Shansi is practically non-existent for the same reason. A vast internal trade is, however, carried on over the roads, and by means of numerous canals and navigable rivers. The most populous part of China is singularly well adapted for the construction of a network of railways, and a first attempt to introduce them into the country was made in 1876, when a line from Shanghai to Woosung, ten miles in length, was constructed by an English company. The little rail- way was subsequently purchased by the Chinese Government and closed by them on the 21st October, 1877. Since that time the principle of railways has been fully accepted. The railway from Shanghai to Woosung was re-opened in 1898, as forming part of a line to Soochow which the provincial authorities had obtained permis- sion of the Throne to construct. A tramway, a few miles in length, begun in 1881 to carry coal from the Kaiping coal mines, near Tongshan, to the canal bank, has been extended to Tientsin and Taku on the one hand, and to Kin- chow and Newchwang on the Gulf of Liao-tung on the other. This road was only completed in the early part of 1900, and during the summer months was, between Kinchow and Newchwang, largely destroyed by the Chinese so as to preclude the advance of Russian forces on Peking via Manchuria. A line from Peking to Tientsin was opened in 1897, the Peking terminus being at Machiapu, a point two miles from the Tartar city, whence a short electric line connects it with one of the principal gates; the traffic developed so rapidly that in 1898-9 the line had to be doubled. From Lukouchiao (or Marco Polo's Bridge) a line of about eighty miles in length has been constructed southward to Paotingfu, the capital of the province of Chihli; this line, in October, 1899, was handed over by the British con- structors to the Belgian Syndicate as an integral factor in the great trans-continental line from Peking to Hankow. These lines were all more or less deliberately and in some parts completely destroyed by the Chinese during 1900. The Railways, as foreign innovations, were particularly hateful to the Boxers, who in many cases attacked the lines with a fury as intense as it was insensate; burning the stations, destroying bridges, firing the sleepers and carrying off the metals. Later on, track destruction was a strong feature of the strategy of the Imperial troops, and from their point of view, wisely so. It was the cutting of the Railway that was the sole cause of Admiral Seymour's failure in his gallant attempt to rescue the Legations. All the lines in North China were attacked and badly cut. The terminus at Peking has been brought inside the Chinese City and is at the Chien Men or Southern Gate of the Manchu City. A branch line has been made from this terminus to Tung Chow, the head of the water- ways; and both the French and Germans have pushed on the trunk lines being built under their exclusive auspices in Chihli, Honan, and in Shantung respectively. Railway vandalism was the first evidence of the savagery and magnitude of the Boxer sedition. It is significant that the Imperial Government was so inert in protecting its own property.
A Belgian Syndicate has constructed a trunk line of about 650 miles in length from Hankow to Paotingfu, where it joins the existing Paotingfu and Lukoachiao line, thus giving through communication with Peking. The line is now said to be more French than Belgian. In Honan the railway crosses the Yellow River on one of the longest bridges in Asia, but it is an open secret that mistakes have been made as to the character of the available foundations and the requirements of the traffic to be carried on have been seriously misjudged. The American- China Development Company obtained a concession for the construction of a line from Wuchang, on the southern bank of the Yangtsze immediately opposite to Hankow, to Canton. A branch line from Canton to Fatshan and Shamsui was completed in 1904. It became known about this time that Belgians had acquired a predominating interest in the concession, and the announcement aroused so powerful an opposition among the Chinese of the provinces to be traversed by the trunk line that the concession was cancelled by the Chinese Government who agreed to pay to the Amer. ican China Development Co. the sum of $6,750,000 (gold) by way of compensation. The money for this purpose was lent to the Wuchang Viceroy by the Government of
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