Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/125

Rh therefore, depend on the agency of pack animals or coolies, and the roads they follow are mere trails winding around the steep mountain sides or threading the bottoms of narrow valleys, where swift streams must be forded at frequent intervals. Under such circumstances it is evident that there can be but little effective traffic. Only comparatively light and expensive articles can be transported long distances. Around the edges of the mountain mass where the populous cities of the adjoining plains can be reached with one or two days' travel, there has been for centuries an important trade in lumber. The mountains have now been so largely deforested, however, that it is necessary to go farther and farther back into the heads of the valleys to find large trees. Hence, only the more expensive kinds of lumber such as coffin boards—which are absolutely indispensable, even to the poorer classes,—can profitably be brought out. These are often carried for 20 or 30 miles on the backs of coolies—a costly mode of transportation. The smaller trees and brush the mountaineers convert into charcoal, which they carry on their own backs down to the towns along the foothills.

Lack of transportation facilities is doubtless the chief reason why the opium poppy has in the past been widely cultivated in this part of China, although the practise has lately been prohibited by the government. The advantage in poppy culture was that it could be carried on in small scattered fields and the product was so valuable for unit of weight that it would pay for long-distance transportation across the mountains. The inhabitants of the region themselves were not, however, generally addicted to the use of the drug.

The rainfall of the central mountain region is sufficient to supply the many springs and tributary brooks of which the people have made use in irrigation. The mildness of the climate here permits the growing of rice, and by terracing the hillsides they are able to make a succession of narrow curved basins in which the aquatic crop may be grown. For the cultivation of rice it is necessary that the fields be completely submerged during part of the season, and so there must be a plentiful supply of water.

On the larger rivers such as the Han and the Yang-tze, and their chief tributaries, boats are successfully used. In fact, the Chinese river boatmen are so skilful in the handling of their high-prowed skiffs, that they navigate canyons full of rapids which most of us would consider too dangerous to attempt. The descent of one of these rivers is an easy although exciting experience. The return trip, however, is slow and laborious, for the boats must be dragged upstream by coolies harnessed to a long bamboo rope, which has the advantage of being very light as well as strong. In the many places where the river banks are so precipitous that it is impossible to walk along them, it becomes necessary