Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/51

Rh a single season. The provinces of Keang-soo and Gan-hwuy, Shan-tung and Shan-se, Chĕ-keang and Ho-nan, are those which yield the greatest revenue to the emperor, and consequently those which are most productive to the people; while the thick set stalks of waving corn in the vicinity of those places fully substantiate the character given of them by foreign travellers and native documents, as being the granary of the land.

To the fertility of the soil, we may add the consideration that it is very extensively cultivated. China contains, as has been before observed, 830,719,360 English acres; and if we allow one third of this area for hills, rivers, marshes, and waste lands, we shall have 553,812,906 acres for cultivable ground. In ascertaining this, however, we are not left to conjecture; as there exists a report made to the emperor Këen-lung, in the year 1745, of the amount of land then under cultivation, according to which it appears, that reckoning the land belonging to individuals, with that in the possession of the Tartar standards, the military, the priests, and the literary there were, at that time, 595,598,221 English acres under cultivation; since which period, a new estimate has given 640,579,381 English acres, as the total extent of occupied land in China. Thus it appears, that more that three-fourths of the surface are owned and tilled by man, allowing, according to the highest census, nearly one acre and three-quarters to each individual. The greatest part of this area is laid out exclusively in arable land, and devoted to the production of food for man alone. In China, the natives make no use of butter or cheese, and very seldom of milk; the principal animal food is pork, which is