1850.
Topography of the Province of Sz'chuen.
325
and forming the division between the basins of the Yellow and Yáng- tsz' rivers. These mountains are the refuge of musk and other deer, and from their bowels are dug a variety of minerals, especially the yuh or nephrite, of which the Chinese make ornaments. Some of these mountains are almost inaccessible by reason of their steepness, and their defiles were the resort of brigands and outlaws during troubled times, and are more or less so to this day.
III. The department of Kiáting lies along the R. Min, between Sii- chau fú and Chingtú fú, separated from the latter by three inferior departments, in one of the most fertile parts of Sz'chuen. Its chief town is a place of considerable importance, situated at the junction of the Tá-tú river (here called the R. Yáng) and the Tsing-í kiáng✯ or Green-Clothes river, with the Min, whose waters afford abundant supplies to irrigate the plains, and convey their har- vests to remote regions. Musk deer are also found in the hills. But the greatest source of employment and profit is in the vast quantities of salt obtained from Artesian wells bored in the earth in the district of Kienwei, whose waters are evaporated to furnish the mineral. Λη account of these wells is furnished by M. Imbert, in Annales de la Foi, Vol. III. page 369, from which we make the extract :-
Some tens of thousands of these salt-pits occur in an area of about ten. leagues in length and four or five in breadth. Every private man who pos- sesses a little capital seeks a partner, and in company with him digs one or more pits at an expense of more than a thousand taels. The manner of digging them is not such as is usual among ourselves; for this people do everything on a small scale, and know not how to perform anything great, rather contriving to accomplish their ends with time and patience, and with less expense than we. They have not the art of piercing the rocks by mining, and all the pits are found in rock. The pits are ordinarily from five to eight hundred French feet in depth, and only five, or at most six, inches in diameter. If the soil on the surface be three or four feet deep, they fix in it a wooden tube, and place a stone on the top having an orifice of the same diameter, through which they work a rammer or head of steel of three or four hundred pounds weight. This head of steel is indented at the end, being made a little concave beneath, and rounded above. A strong and agile man mounts upon a scaffolding, and treads all the morning upon a sweep, which raises this rammer two feet high, and lets it fall with his feet. They pour water into the hole from to time, to pulverize the bits of rock and better reduce them to a jelly. The rammer or head of steel is suspended from the sweep by a well-made rattan cord, small as the finger but strong as a catgut, to which they attach a triangular piece of wood; another man seats himself beside the cord. As the sweep is elevated he seizes the trian- gle, and turns the cord half round so that the rammer may fall in a contrary way. At mid-day, he mounts the scaffolding to relieve his comrade, and continues the work until evening; at night, two other men take their places. When three inches have been hollowed out, they draw out the rainmer with all the matter that has accumulated about it, (for I have already mention- ed it was hollow on the under side) by means of a great windlass which serves for winding up the cord.