Page:The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey.djvu/425

Rh Manchuria, and Eastern Mongolia, says: "In Mongolia cultivation makes a perceptible difference in a few years' time. Boreas yields to Ceres; for it has been observed that the warmth increases and the seasons lengthen as cultivation advances. It has been found by the Chinese, who have entered Mongolia as agriculturists, that crops which at first did not thrive, owing to the cold, after a few years yielded an excellent return." It would be an interesting study to investigate how far the desiccation of Chinese Turkestan, etc., has been caused by the devastating wars and rebellions which have made cultivation impossible.

Concerning the emigration of the Chinese to Inner Mongolia, Mr. C. W. Campbell, in a paper before the Royal Geographical Society in 1903, said: "Swarms of Chinese spread beyond the Great Wall, ousting the Mongols. In 1899 the Chinese settlers had reached a mile or so beyond Chagan-balgas; in 1903 I found them ploughing the virgin soil near Dbasum-nor, a pool which is ten miles farther north." The settlers who have been pouring in since the late war between Russia and Japan have been so many that the British and Foreign Bible Society has just appointed a foreign colporteur to work among them.

Concerning the population of, it is extremely difficult to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. It is stated by some authorities to be only two and a half millions, by others as five millions (see Prince Kropotkin), and by others as much higher. Thus Dr. Williamson quotes Dr. Edkin as assigning the population of Inner Mongolia alone as ten millions, and he adds, "I should say that this is not far from the truth." Among such wide variations it is difficult to determine what to accept.

The limits of this article will not allow much to be said about the important but complicated story of the past history of the Mongols and other races who have inhabited. Suffice it to say that the discovery of Turkish-Chinese bilingual slabs has proved that the Hiung-nu, whom the Great Wall was built to resist, were of the same