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from the remotest parts of the three provinces in winter to depôts on the Liao River to await the opening of navigation in spring, and thousands of these carts annually came as far south as Newchwang and Tien-tsin (then the only two ports through which the export and import trade of Manchuria was conducted on any considerable scale), carrying back loads of salt manufactured near Newchwang and miscellaneous foreign and native goods into the interior. It might be imagined that the cost of baulage by cart for hundreds of miles would be prohibitive, and that the introduction of the Chinese Eastern Railway, running as it did (and now does under two names) through the heart of Manchuria from north to south and east to west, would quickly have ended this traffic; but it must be remembered that while the animals and carts are employed in spring, summer, and autumn in farm work, they would, owing to the rigorous climate, be completely idle as well as a drain in winter, and their owners were content to become carriers if they could earn sufficient to pay expenses. The result is that to-day these carts, in spite of the Chinese Eastern Railway, the South Manchurian Railway, and the Imperial Railways of North China in Manchuria, still pay annual visits to Newchwang in winter, but in diminished numbers. diminished numbers are due for the most part to the South Manchurian Railway, which, with the exception of the traffic through Vladivostock over the Chinese Eastern Railway, has succeeded in attracting the bulk of the trade with the country to the east and north-east of the line, but has affected only to a limited extent the trade to the west and north-west, which continues in the main to be conducted by cart in the old way through old-established channels.
These
When I visited Hsin-min-t'un or Hsin-min Fu as it is now called, Fa-ku-men recently raised to the rank of sub-prefectural city under the name of Fu-min Ting, and the district city of Tiehling between the 21st and the 28th September, there was no traffic whatever on the roads connecting these inland marts which were opened to foreigu trade by the Japanese Treaty with China of December 1905. The peasantry were busy harvesting their crops and carting the grain, beans, and other produce from the fields to their homesteads. Hsin-min Fu is the present northern terminus of the Imperial Railways of North China in Manchuria. It is a busy commercial centre with a population of from 60,000 to 70,000 inhabitants, and its principal industry is the extraction of oil from beans and the manufacture of bean-cake, which is carried on by a score of mills.
Here I carefully questioned a number of Chinese merchants in regard to the trade between Hsin-min Fu and Fa-ku-men and was informed that it was considerable in winter, the roads of 50 miles (160 l) between the two places being described as one string of carts during that season. They referred to the projected railway to Fa-ku-men and their declaration that such a line would shift the centre of trade, and the market from Hsin-min Fu to Fa-ku-men proves that the two places are intimately connected commercially.
From Isin-min Fu I travelled by Chinese cart north by east to Fa-ku-men resting the first night at Hsiao-ta-tzu, which lies half-way between these two places. Between Hsin-min Fu and Hsiao-ta-tzu there are fourteen hamlets and villages, most of them containing Chinese inns or caravanserais with large courtyards for the accommodation of the traffic along the road. Many of the inns were shut, but they reopen during winter, their busy season. My carter corroborated the statement made to me by the merchants of Hsin-min Fu that the winter traffic along this road is considerable.
The road from Hsin-min Fu to Hsiao-ta-tzu passes over a fine broad plain which was well cultivated and yielding excellent crops of tall millet (Holcus sorghum, L.), the two smaller millets (Setaria italica, Kth., and Panicum miliaceur, L., the former predominating), beans (from which oil is extracted and bean-cake manufactured), upland rice, some buckwheat of the white-flowered variety, and a little cotton. Hemp (Cannabis sativa, L.) and Perilla ocymoides, L. (from the seeds of which oil is extracted) were growing as borders to other crops. The maize, castor-oil, and sesamum crops were already reaped; the cobs of corn were drying in the sun and bundles of sesamum awaited the thrashing or rolling out of the seeds. The foreign potato is also largely grown and used for food. The country is little wooded except in the villages and round graveyards, where the willow, elm, and poplar are the usual and practically the only trees. Two small streams, tributaries of the Liao, flow eastward across the road 8 and 20 miles respectively north of Isin-min Fu at the villages of Hsi-chiu-men and Kung-chu-t'un.
The village of Hsiao-ta-tzu lies about a mile to the south-west of the southern terminus of a range of low, grass-covered, unwooded hills which rise from the plain and stretching northwards form its eastern boundary. To the west, but at a distance
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of some miles, there is another range with a north-easterly trend. The country lying between these ranges is more undulating than to the south and the soil, although somewhat stony, was bearing crops scarcely inferior to those seen to the south of Hsiao-ta-tzu. The highroad keeps to the eastern side of this undulating plain passing north by east through eight villages to the town of Fa-ku-men, which has every appearance of being hemmed in at a distance on all but the southern side by low hill ranges, through which, however, roads lead east, north, and west.
Fa-ku-men, or Fu-min Ting, is a small unwalled town of some 30,000 inhabitants. Like Manchurian towns generally it is built of mud and brick and its main streets, like those of Hsin-min Fu, run east and west. Its chief industry is the conversion of beans and castor-oil seed into oil and cake, and it contains numerous caravanserais for the accommodation of the traffic which passes through it and of merchants who resort to the town for the sale and purchase of produce, in which they are assisted by the keepers of these establishments in return for a commission on all transactions effected. I stayed for two days in one of these caravanserais, where I had special facilities for inquiring into the trade between Fa-ku-men and Hsin-min Fu and between Fa-ku-men and T'iehling. That trade, as I have already stated, is doue in winter; but I found that in the open season there is a considerable trade between Fa-ku-men and Newchwang, which is carried on neither through Tiehling nor Hsin-min Fu.
On the right bank of the Liao, 25 miles south-east of Fa-ku-men and about the same distance below Tiehling, is a place called San-mien-ch'uan, where goods are Janded and shipped by junk as long as navigation is possible, There is little difference in distance between Fa-ku-men and San-mien-ch'nan and Fa-ku-men and Ma-feng-k'ou, the shipping port of Tiehling on the Liao. The latter may be a trifle longer; but at San-mien-ch'uan the shallows above Tichling frequently causing as they do several days delay when the river is low are avoided, and no other obstacles to navigation exist between it and Newchwang. From the caravanserai in which I resided carts left daily for San-mien-ch'uan, each loaded with twenty-five bean-cakes weighing 72 lbs. a-piece. Each cart had a team of three animals. Although the Liao was high at the time of my visit the traffic from Fa-ku-men was not diverted to Ma-feng-k'ou nor to the railway at Tielling, and during the open season San-mien-ch'uan is undoubtedly the shipping port of Fa-ku-men for produce bound for Newchwang. Iu the winter it is otherwise: then San-mien-ch'uan loses its importance, and the two outlets for Fa-ku-men produce are Tiehling and Hsin-min Fu. The exports from Fa-ku-men to Tielling consist almost entirely of beau-cakes, but the amount exported depends on the market. If higher prices rule at Tiehling the cakes go there; if Hsin-min Fu proves a better market, they go by cart to Hsin-min Fu and are thence carried by rail to Newchwang. In any case, so far as I could ascertain, most of the bean and castor-oil cake made at the thirty-four mills in Fa-ku-men goes to Hsin-nin Fu. Up to the present I have been speaking of the export trade, and in particular of the products of Fa-ku-men and neighbourhood; but Fa-ku-men lies ou the main winter cart road from the Province of Hei-lung-chiang to the south, and, although much of this traffic has naturally been attracted to the South Manchurian Railway at Chang-ch'un Fu or K'uan-ch'eng-tzu, it still retains commercial relations with the country to the north-east as far as Petuna on the Sungari, with the country to the north (of which Ch'eng-chia-t'un, 80 miles from Fa-ku-men, is the centre), and with Mongolia on the west. Chinese merchants at Fa-ku-men estimated that the South Manchurian Railway had absorbed 50 per cent. of the traffic passing through the town in former years, but they were confident that, if connected with Hsin-miu Fu by rail, Fa-ku-men would tap still more of the grain-producing districts of Eastern I was informed at Mongolia which are now being opened up by Chinese colonists. Kuang-ning Hsien, which I visited, that much of the produce of Eastern Mongolia finds its way south by cart to the Chinese Railway at Chin-chou Fu by a road passing to the west of Kuang-ning Isien, and through the city of Yi-chou, and this may have suggested to the Chinese Government the projected railway from Chin- chon Fu to Tao-nan Fu now being surveyed. In Fa-ku-men I repeatedly asked for a comparison between the volume of its trade with Tichling aud Hsin-min Fu and invariably received the same replies. They were: Sau-mien-ch'uan is the only port of Fa-ku-men during the greater part of the year when the Liao is open to navigation, and during the winter Hsin-min Fu is more important than Tiehling. Questioned as to the import trade of T'iehling, the merchants replied that Japanese yarn, cottons and miscellaneous goods were brought to Fa-ku-men, but not in any great quantity, and this was borne out by the replies to the questions I put at the inns on the road between
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