44
SIR JOHN BOWRING
(No. 3.)
CANTON, 29TH JUNE, 1855.
DEAR SIR,
In respect to the question of the Population of China, I have nothing new of any general application to the subject. It would be a good service to the statistics of the race, for Hienfung to make out a general census, as his grandfather did, now forty-three years after the last.
The visits made to villages and towns in this prefecture since the breaking out of disturbances last June, have strengthened rather than diminished one's faith in the accuracy of the census. Large towns, like Shihlung, Kiúkiáng, Kinchuh, Fuhshán, Sintsiun, and others, have been found to contain even larger numbers than the representations of the Chinese had led one to believe. Fuhshán occupies even more ground than Canton, rather than less; and several observers agreed in estimating the portion which was burned last autumn as large as the entire western suburbs of Canton. Sintsiun is estimated at Half a Million, though data are wanted to confirm this figure. You will see a list of villages enumerated by Mr. Bonney in the Anglo-Chinese Calendars for 1852 and 1853, all of which were situated within a radius of two miles of Whampoa, or on Fa-té island, west of Macao passage. Few spots in the world maintain a denser population than the delta of Pearl River, nearly all of which is included in the prefecture of Kwangshan, which is about one-ninth of the whole province. Its density of population doubtless is greater than any other equal area in the whole province; for if the whole contained as many, the entire amount could hardly be less than thirty millions instead of nineteen millions as now reckoned.
The Registrar General must needs be content with an approximate estimate, from the nature of the case, our inability to make minute personal examination, and the lapse of time since the last general census. Hue, I see, estimates the combined population of Wúcháng, Hányáng, and Hánkau in Húpeh, at the high figure of Eight Millions, if I remember aright, for I have not the book to refer to; this is more than I have seen any one else reckon it. He
44
SIR JOHN BOWRING
(No. 3.)
CANTON, 29TH JUNE, 1855.
DEAR SIR, In respect to the question of the Population of China, I have nothing new of any general application to the subject. It would be a good service to the statistics of the race, for Hienfung to make out a general census, as his grandfather did, now forty-three years after the last.
The visits made to villages and towns in this prefecture since the breaking out of disturbances last June, have strengthened rather than diminished one's faith in the accuracy of the census. Large towns, like Shihlung, Kiúkiáng, Kinchuh, Fuhshán, Sintsiun, and others, have been found to contain even larger numbers than the representations of the Chinese had led one to believe. Fuhshán occupies even more ground than Canton, rather than less; and several observers agreed in estimating the portion which was burned last autumn as large as the entire western suburbs of Canton. Sintsiun is estimated at Half a Million, though data are wanted to confirm this figure. You will see a list of villages enumerated by Mr. Bonney in the Anglo-Chinese Calendars for 1852 and 1853, all of which were situated within a radius of two miles of Whampoa, or on Fa-té island, west of Macao passage. Few spots in the world maintain a denser population than the delta of Pearl River, nearly all of which is included in the pre- fecture of Kwangshan, which is about one-ninth of the whole province. Its density of population doubtless is greater than any other equal area in the whole province; for if the whole contained as many, the entire amount could hardly be less than thirty millions instead of nineteen millions as now reckoned.
The Registrar General must needs be content with an approxi- mate estimate, from the nature of the case, our inability to make minute personal examination, and the lapse of time since the last general census. Hue, I see, estimates the combined population of Wúcháng. Hányáng, and Hánkau in Húpeh, at the high figure of Eight Millions, if I remember aright, for I have not the book to refer to; this is more than I have seen any one else reckon it. He
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