Mr. Denby to Mr. Blaine.
Peking, August 28, 1890. (Received October 16.)
Sir: The province of Sze chuen, lying in western China, on the borders of Thibet, has been known for many hundred years as one of the most prosperous and peaceful portions of the Empire. It has always held a rank of some importance and was at one time the site of the capital, the emperors of the later Han dynasty having ruled at Ching-hu Fu. Its present flourishing condition, however, dates from the early part of the seventeenth century. At that time, in the disorders of State which culminated in the overthrow of the Ming dynasty, Sze-chuen was devastated and almost depopulated by the notorious robber Chang Hsien-chung. To repeople its fertile hillsides land was allotted to immigrants from Hu-kwang and Kiang-si, to whom, as an inducement to settle, great reductions in the land tax were made. This ancient concession has been conscientiously adhered to, so that to this day the land tax remains almost nominal.
Throughout the present dynasty its history has been uneventful. The Taiping rebellion, which devastated thirteen provinces, inflicted little or no injury here. Continued peace, fertility of soil, and freedom from taxation have enabled the inhabitants to attain to a degree of prosperity and contentment contrasting favorably with other parts of China.
Sze-chuen comprises a territory of 167,000 square miles, being almost as large as France, and has a population numbering between 35,000,000 and 45,000,000. It may be described in general terms as a plateau at the foot of the vast highlands of Thibet, exceedingly mountainous in its topography, and abounding in streams and rivers carrying a large volume of water and flowing with great rapidity. From the four largest of these rivers Sze-chuen (four rivers) gets its name. In geographical features it is divided into two parts, Western and Eastern Sze-chuen. The former partakes of the character of the Central Asian table-land. It is very rugged in its conformation, sparsely populated, and almost unfit for cultivation. The eastern portion, however, called by Rich-thofen the Red Basin, from the abundance of its red sandstone, is the scene of the industry, wealth, and prosperity which mark descriptions of western China. The climate is of an almost tropical character, and [Page 202] the soil of great fertility, producing nearly all the cereals, as well as silk, hemp, sugar, tobacco, opium, and an unusual variety of fruits. Cotton is cultivated to some extent, but not in sufficient quantities to supply the demands of the local market.
The growth of opium has in recent years assumed great importance in Eastern Sze-chuen. The poppy is grown over vast areas, forming in many districts a regular winter crop of the bean and Indian-corn lands. This crop is very profitable to the farmer, not only for the drug produced from the sap, but for the oil pressed from the seed, the lye manufactured from the ashes of the stalks, and the leaves, which furnish food for pigs. Thirty catties of seed will yield 10 catties of superior oil for illuminating purposes or for food. Though it is doubtless chiefly for the opium produced that it is cultivated, it is said that the other products of the poppy would remunerate the grower. It is not difficult to raise, will mature in time to allow other crops to ripen on the same ground the same year, and the opium produced is readily converted into cash, all of which tends to make it popular with the farmer. The facility with which opium, on account of its convenient form and small bulk in comparison with its value, can be carried over the mountainous roads of Sze-chuen, enabling the bearer to evade vexatious likin stations and to smuggle it duty free into neighboring markets, tends also to make it an exceedingly profitable product. Some idea of the inducement to this smuggling can be formed when it is remembered that the customs duty on imported opium is 110 taels per chest. A large percentage of that produced in Sze-chuen evades all taxation whatever. The area under cultivation annually increases, and the drug of Sze chuen, with that of Manchooria, to which, however, it is inferior, constantly encroaches on the market of the Indian product. It is a source of great dissatisfaction to the missionary to observe the wide extent of fertile ground given up to Indian corn and poppy—the one to be converted into alcohol, the other into opium.
The mineral resources of this province have been long known to the Chinese, though, with the primitive means at their disposal, never fully developed. Bituminous coal, copper, gold, and iron ore are abundant, but mined in only limited quantities.
Salt, which is a Government monopoly, is obtained by the evaporation of the water of the brine wells which abound in certain districts of Sze-chuen. These brine wells and the manufacture of salt there constitute a most interesting industry. The wells are found about 175 miles from Chun-Khing, on the bank of an affluent of the Yang-tse River, near the flourishing city of Tzu-lin-tsin, or self-flowing wells.” The manufacture of salt, which has been carried on here for 1,600 to 2,000 years, is conducted somewhat as follows: By means of a rude iron drill holes 6 inches in diameter and varying from a few score of feet to 5,000 or 6,000 feet in depth are bored in the rock. The boring sometimes lasts for 40 years before brine is reached, and is carried on from generation to generation. When salt-water is finally found, it is drawn up by bullocks in long bamboo tubes by means of a rope working over a huge drum. In the vicinity of the salt wells natural gas wells are also found, from which gas is supplied to evaporate the brine in large iron caldrons, leaving the pure salt as a deposit. The product of salt here is enormous. There are 24 gas wells and about 1,000 brine wells in operation in the vicinity, producing annually 200,000 tons of salt, valued at $5,000,000.*
[Page 203]The methods of boring these wells and of evaporating the brine have been repeatedly described and need not be detailed here.* The industry, however, is one of the most important and interesting in China. A recent traveler says:
No one can visit this remarkable section of Sze-chuen and see the operation of this ancient industry without feeling more respect for the people who designed and executed an undertaking on so prodigious a scale 16 centuries ago.
It is rather a remarkable fact that Marco Polo, the noted Venetian traveler of the thirteenth century, who mentions the oil wells on the Caspian Sea, and whose notice nothing of importance seems to have escaped, does not speak of the kerosene and natural gas wells of Sze-chuen, though such phenomena were absolutely unknown in Europe at that time. He remained probably but a short time in Sze-chuen and mentions only its capital city and its mighty river, which he identified with the Yang-tse, but which is the tributary river Min.
The recent convention concluded between China and Great Britain, opening Chun Khing to British trade, attracted attention anew to that city and to the resources ot the province of Sze chuen. Chun-Khing is the commercial metropolis of western China, and, under its new status as a treaty port, is destined to annually increasing importance. It is situated on the Yang-tse, at the mouth of the Kiating River, 725 miles above Hankow and 1,506 miles from Shanghai. It is beautifully located on a sandstone promontory surrounded by mountains, and resembles, it is said, the city of Quebec.
Notwithstanding the difficulty of passing the Yang-tse gorges above Ichang with junks towed by coolies against the rapid current, the trade between Chun-Khing and the lower river ports is considerable. The Yang-tse and its tributary here are covered with thousands of junks, and the wharves and river front present the animated scene of a busy mercantile center. The past history of Chun-Khing does not reach back to any great antiquity. It is said to have been built by imperial command about 230 years after Christ. Its ancient earth walls were replaced with stone in 1400, and these were destroyed at the siege which the city underwent at the beginning of this dynasty, in which most of the population were slain. Since this disastrous incident Chun-Khing has flourished with the prosperity of Sze-chuen. It now numbers about 120,000 people and is the second city in the province, Ching-tu-Fu, with 1,000,000 people, being the first.
Chun-Khing was the scene of the disastrous antiforeign riots in 1886, in which the Roman Catholic, English Inland, and the American Methodist Episcopal missions suffered the destruction of their property. The loss sustained, however, was fairly compensated by the Imperial Government, and these three missions are again in the field. Since that time no hostile feelings seem to have developed themselves among this usually peaceable population.
It is to be hoped that trade at Chun-Khing as a treaty port will increase so rapidly and be found so profitable and desirable that the restriction of steam navigation to the lower Yang-tse will be soon abolished and the whole province of Sze-chuen be brought within cheap and easy reach of foreign commerce. The resources of the province, the industry and prosperity of the people, are such that the foreign merchant’s most sanguine estimate for the future can not be considered extravagant.
I have, etc.,