features of the country. The rock is soft sandstone and shale, often much displaced. The softness of the stone makes terrace cultivation very easy, and this system is carried to greater perfection here than in any other part of China. Crossing one of the little cols, and looking over the valleys that break away from it, one is struck by the thought of the sum of human labour expended to bring rugged hills into such complete subjection, and one receives a most lively impression of the patient industry of this wonderful people. From peak to valley the whole hill-side has been levelled into terraces, so that not a foot of ground is lost. More than this, the terraces are cut up into fields—beds would be a better word—averaging 15 feet by 40 feet, perfectly level, and enclosed by narrow banks. The outside bank of each bed has a rough sluice to regulate the level of water, any surplus, after the ground is sufficiently covered for paddy, falling into the bed below, and so on till the bottom of the valley is reached. The result is that water lies at all levels, and appears to defy the law of gravity.
On the 31st October we reached Lu-chou, the entrepôt of the Ssu-ch'uan salt trade, situated on an alluvial bank between the Yang-tzu and a tributary called the To River, which brings down the salt from the celebrated wells at Tzu-liu-ching. Fortunately, both for the reader and writer of this Report, there is no need to enter into the intricacies of the native salt trade; that necessary is supplied from the Ssu-ch'uan wells to the greater part of Western China, and is one of the great sources of the wealth of this fortunate province.* With regard to foreign trade, we learnt that Lu-chou and the neighbourhood consume about 3,000l. worth of piece-goods and cotton yarn per annum. The city has no manufacture of its own, and only benefits by the salt as the port of transhipment and by supplying food and clothing to the 100,000 men employed at the salt wells. Transit passes are not respected beyond Chung-ch'ing, where their legality has only been clearly established since 1877. But li-kin between Chung-ch'ing and Lu-chou is not very heavy, foreign cottons, for instance, paying 36 cash (1¼d.) per piece. (See Appendix I.)
Sketches Nos. 1 and 2 attached to this Report will show the two roads that connect Yün-nan with Ssu-ch'uan. Although the eastern road by Yung-ning Hsien is the shorter by several days, the country easier, and the road in better condition, almost the whole trade follows the western route by Chao-t'ung Fu. The reason is said to be that the former route crosses a corner of the Province of Kuei-chou, involving an additional payment of li-kin for that province, while, on the western route, Yün-nan and Ssŭ-ch'uan are conterminous. I followed the easier route; but this Report would be very incomplete without some notice of the western road, which is the most important trade route into the Province of Yün-nan.
From Ch'ung-ch'ing to Ping-shan Hsien, some 20 miles above the point at which this route touches the Yang-tzŭ, Mr. Arthur Davenport reports that there is “an uninterrupted run of deep water sufficient for the requirements of foreign steamers.” As far as Lao-wa-t'an (1,140 feet) small boats on the Hêng River help out the land carriage, but after crossing that river the caravan route proper begins. Goods are there transferred to pack-animals, and conveyed through Chao-tung Fu (6,580 feet) and Tung-ch'uan Fu (7,190 feet) to the capital. The value of the trade is a difficult question. I was told by several li-kin officials in the province that the Lao-wa-t'an barrier received a larger quota of that impost than any other in Yün-nan. Report gives the net receipts at about 80,000l. a-year, of which about 25,000l. is paid by opium, and somewhat less by salt. Of the gross value of the exports, opium, which pays li-kin at Lao-wa-t'an at the rate of about 6 per cent, ad valorem, is said to represent as much as 70 to 80 per cent. The imports into Yün-nan consist of salt, raw cotton from Hankow, native cotton cloth from Hankow, cotton cloth woven in Ssu-ch'uan from Hankow cotton, tobacco, piece-goods, and foreign yarn; and the exports, of opium, metals, drugs, and tea from Pu-erh Fu.
On the 2nd November we left Lu-chou, not in the highest spirits, for one of the porters had died of cholera; and as we were all lodging in the same court-yard, the event was as unpleasant for the rest of us as surprising and painful for the poor fellow himself. Crossing the river, we passed through a large market village, situated also on an alluvial bed, and making, with Lu-chou, a flat surface of some 3 or 4 square miles—probably the largest piece of level ground along the Yang-tzu between this and the plain of Hupei, 600 miles to the east. But the small hills and narrow valleys soon begin again, and, after a walk of 9 miles or so, we reached Na-chi Hsien, situated on the right
* The Taotai in charge of the salt revenue of Ssu-ch'uan tells me that the wells of the province yield about 2,500,000l. worth of salt per annum.
† Report of Grosvenor Mission. Parliamentary Papers, “China No. 2 (1877).”
Altitudes and the sketches of this route are taken from Mr. Baber's Map.
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