Page:Ling-Nam; or, Interior views of southern China, including explorations in the hitherto untraversed island of Hainan (IA cu31924023225307).pdf/204

 200 Ling-Nam.

From the mouth of the Chung-how creek it is but a few miles to Sai-ngon, an important market town, with large villages closely built together on both sides of the river, and connected by a fine five-arched stone bridge. Near the town is an unusually fine temple called the Ling-shan Min, and beside it a large school called the Man-wa College. The hills about this place are much lower, and most of them quite barren. Nearly all the land is under cultivation, the mountains rising only in the distance. Coal is found in some of the hills, and mined to a limited extent. The country has the look of having been long settled and carefully cultivated for ages. A short distance above the town there is one striking exception to the tame and verdurelegs hills that prevail,

A bold rocky peak, covered to its top with green and flowering shrubs, and surrounded by a heavy fringe of trees at its foot, rises abruptly several hundred feet in height out of the very midst of a smooth barren hill, its picturesqueness brought out. more strikingly by contrast with its tame surroundings.

Another five miles traversed, and we reach She-kok-tam, the point at which much of the salt brought by boats is transhipped. Long lines of boats anchor opposite the village, in which a fine group of transit warehouses are built. From this point the salt is carried through the plain of Chung-how mentioned above, and over the moun- tains into Hunan, to the town of Ma-t’an-po, and thence by boat to Wing-chow, where; the cost of transportation being so great, it frequently is sold at the rate of .ten catties for one dollar.

We are still ten miles from the head of the stream, but