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Topography of Sz'chuen.
JULY,
"This part of the province where I live presents a constant alternation of hills and small plains. Firs, osks, and palms shade those hills which the people find too steep to cultivate. The plains, almost always submerged, resemble vast ponds, in whose bosoms are seen the crops of rice. The whole country is traversed by national roads-narrow and muddy footpaths, where two men can hardly go abreast, and if you chance to meet a sedan in the way, you must go back to where the way happens to be wider. This is all for economy's sake as the people understand it, for as the road can be improved only at the expense of the neighboring fields, they think that the traveler had better be cramped than that the harvest should suffer. Cities are not numerous here; that which is called the chief town of this region is the smallest of towns of the third rank, and yet its population is considera- ble. Here and there are market-towns where fairs are held nine times a month. The plain is covered with detached farmhouses hid among bamboos, apples, oranges, and other trees which remind us of the country we are in. One of them I have made my parsonage, to pass the hot season, which is very oppressive."
The climate presents great extremes.
M. Dufresse mentions that in Feb. 1784, the cold continued fifteen days, and hundreds of poor people died from exposure; while another states, that during August and September, the heats in the plains are very great. Famines af- flict all parts of China, while the great water-courses, through which the surplus of one province could be so easily carried to supply the deficiency of another, are infested with water thieves to such a degree that the trader dare not venture his goods. In Sz'chuen, in 1840, thousands died of want. An eye-witness says:—
"This year the misery is frightful. Rice has doubled in price. The rich, afraid lest they shall not have enough, have not given employment to the poor, who live entirely by their labor, and are consequently reduced to the most horrible distress. Untold numbers have perished by famine. How many corpses have we seen in the highways! Want has multiplied crime. The people have exposed their offspring, many have cast themselves into the rivers to shorten their torments; and robbers (always numerous in China) in- undate the country. Farmers must guard not only their rice-fields, but even their kitchen-gardens. During the day, famished children, and grown up persons by night, come down upon the unripe grain like a swarm of locusts; and if the owner strikes one to drive him off, he will perchance hang himself upon the nearest tree out of revenge, that he may be implicated in his death before the rulers. Audacious thieves infest the thoroughfares, spread- ing themselves over the country in the night, breaking open the doors and laying hold of garments, food, animals-anything they can get. If they are resisted, the unfortunate victims are killed in cold blood, and their cries for help are unheard, for the farinhouses are isolated, and the robbers flee before succor can come. In the mountains, these outrages are perpetrated in open day, and such is the ferocity of the bandits, that they often cut off the hands of women to get their bracelets."
This famine was followed by a plague which almost decimated the inhabitants, and when in 1841, the promising crops encouraged the inhabitants to hope for better times, swarms of insects devoured the grain before it was ripe. Society was almost disorganized through