Page:The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey.djvu/380

 late as 1682 Verbiest reports that many of the cities were almost empty, and of a multitude of towns and villages no trace remained.

At this time the belt of country between Corea and the "palisades," corresponding roughly to the basin of the Yalu, was cleared of its inhabitants, leaving only one road through Fenghwang Cheng and the Corean Gate for intercourse between the two countries. North of this a wide area eastward of the high-road from Kaiyuan to Kirin was reserved as the Imperial Hunting Grounds. Here there may still be seen the earthen ramparts of many abandoned cities, and it is an impressive experience when the traveller comes on these forgotten ruins, standing silent for more than two centuries in what was till yesterday a pathless waste.

Of the history of the Amur region nothing definite is known before the seventeenth century, though inscriptions on the lower Amur show that Chinese from the south had for long traded by sea with the barbarous tribes there. It was not till 1671 that the province of Heilungkiang became organised under the new dynasty, but already bands of Cossack adventurers had come into conflict with the Manchu outposts. By the treaty of Nertchinsk in 1689 the Russians were shut out from the navigation of the Amur, and China was confirmed in possession of the basin of that river north to the Yablonoi mountains. No use, however, was made of this vast territory beyond the collection of the tribute of furs. At the time of the Crimean War the Russians came down the river in strong force, and remained in possession till the treaty of Aigun in 1858 ceded to them the left bank of the Amur, while in 1860 they were granted the lands between the Ussuri and the ocean, now forming the province of Primorsk.

Before 1820 the Chinese were not allowed to settle in the two northern provinces, but in that year the Government instituted the leasing of the public land of Kirin, and since then the tide of immigration has been steadily swelling. From that time dates the settlement of the fertile plain within the great bend of the Sungari, as also of the