Page:China historical and descriptive.djvu/35

Rh of time, the produce of this province will affect the prices of the Indian drug, if it does not render its supply needless. The population in 1812 was computed at twenty-seven millions, which has probably much increased, since civil war has never devastated the district. It, however, bears rather a bad name for local insurrections.

The fifth natural division of China proper lies to the south-east, and includes the southern and eastern portions of Kwang-si and Hoo-nan, the whole of Kwang-tung, Fo-kien, Che-kiang, and Kiang-si, and the southernmost parts of Ngan-whi. It embraces a tract of country a thousand miles long by four hundred in breadth, and may not inaptly be styled the "Broken District," for throughout an area of three hundred thousand square miles there are found no extensive plains or table-lands, but a succession of mountain ranges, whose continuity is continually broken, and whose altitude is not remarkable. The mountains follow the trend of the coast, breaking off into short and irregular ranges, through which the streams find their way and drain the country; and these water-courses, of which there are several hundreds, form the highways of this part of China. With the exception of the West River, which debouches near Canton, not one of them is fit for navigation to any distance inland. Even at the coast, where they are broadest, innumerable obstacles exist in their beds and impede the navigation, but the inhabitants are perfectly content with the existing state of things, and continue to unload whenever they come to a trifling shallow, which a month's labour would remove, with the characteristic