Page:Ningpo to Shanghai.djvu/122

108  Second 12. at Page 37.&mdash;If the reader at this point will retrace what is written, he will find that, in a working week's travel of 424 lé (or after the average of 70 lē per diem, quite as much as can be done with comfort) we passed through 73 villages and two walled Cities; and that of the villages we have noted upwards of 21,000 families, or at the rate of 5 souls to a family, over 105,000 people. The number of inhabitants at the walled cities mentioned we are not in a position to give; but it may be of interest to the curious in such matters to observe that, for the villages and distance given, the rate of population is about 750 per running mile. For running mile may be read square mile; but this may not be taken as the rate for the province, because, of plain where people reside, to mountain where they do not reside, the proportion is as one to three; that is to say, the mountain covers three parts, and the plain one, of the districts traversed. This is an under estimate, and one of plain to five of mountain would be nearer the mark. Though, therefore, the population of the district cities may tend to swell the aggregate in a very great degree, there appears grave reason for doubting whether the published statement of the census of 1812, * giving 670 souls for every square mile of the province of Chekiang is not an over estimate;&mdash;and that there is reason to believe that the populations of the most populous districts have formed the bases for estimating that     * Indeed the estimate made by De Guignes in 1743 and by Allerstein a score of years later, of 15 millions for the whole province, is much more likely to approximite with the real number than the census of 1812 (25 millions ) as given by Gutzlaff in his tables quoted at 98 supra, and cited by other savans without a moment's reflection, apparently, on the probabibility of the correctness.