h
wooden palisades, and Ningouta, the native place of the reigning Imperial
family. Lao-yan, Kai-Tcheou, and Kin-Tcheou, are remarkable for the
extensive commerce their maritime position brings them.

Mantchouria, watered by a great number of streams and rivers, is a
country naturally fertile. Since the cultivation has been in the hands
of the Chinese, the soil has been enriched by a large number of the
products of the interior. In the southern part, they cultivate
successfully the dry rice, or that which has no need of watering, and the
Imperial rice, discovered by the Emperor Khang-Hi. These two sorts of
rice would certainly succeed in France. They have also abundant harvests
of millet, of Kao-Leang or Indian corn (_Holcus Sorghum_), from which
they distil excellent brandy; sesamum, linseed, hemp, and tobacco, the
best in the whole Chinese empire.

The Mantchourians pay especial attention to the cultivation of the
herbaceous-stemmed cotton plant, which produces cotton in extraordinary
abundance. A Meou of these plants, a space of about fifteen square feet,
ordinarily produces 2,000 lbs. of cotton. The fruit of the cotton-tree
grows in the form of a cod or shell, and attains the size of a hazel-nut.
As it ripens, the cod opens, divides into three parts, and develops three
or four small tufts of cotton which contain the seeds. In order to
separate the seed, they make use of a sort of little bow, firmly strung,
the cord of which vibrating over the cotton tufts removes the seeds, of
which a portion is retained for next year's sowing, and the rest is made
into oil, resembling linseed oil. The upper portion of Mantchouria, too
cold to grow cotton, has immense harvests of corn.

Besides these productions, common to China, Mantchouria possesses three
treasures {105} peculiar to itself: jin-seng, sable fur, and the grass
Oula.

The first of these productions has been long known in Europe, though our
learned Academy there ventured some years ago to doubt its existence.
Jin-seng is perhaps the most considerable article of Mantchourian
commerce. Throughout China there is no chemist's shop unprovided with
more or less of it.

The root of jin-seng is straight, spindle-shaped, and very knotty; seldom
so large as one's little finger, and in length from two to three inches.
When it has undergone its fitting preparation, its colour is a
transparent white, with sometimes a slight red or yellow tinge. Its
appearance, the