ranges from three-fourths to three cents per pound, fully twelve to fifteen times the cost of manufacture. The annual production of salt in the Empire is some 1,860,000 tons, and in 1901 salt paid a tax close to ten million dollars.
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Fig. 199.—Chinese village on the bank of the Pei ho, Province of Chihli.
Beyond the salt fields, toward Tientsin, the banks of
the river were dotted at short intervals with groups of
low, almost windowless houses, Fig. 199, built of earth
brick plastered with clay on sides and roof, made more
resistant to rain by an admixture of chaff and cut straw,
and there was a remarkable freshness of look about them
which we learned was the result of recent preparations
made for the rainy season about to open. Beyond the
first of these villages came a stretch of plain dotted thickly
and far with innumerable grave mounds, to which reference
has been made. For nearly an hour we had traveled
up the river before there was any material vegetation, the
soil being too saline apparently to permit growth, but
beyond this, crops in the fields and gardens, with some
fruit and other trees, formed a fringe of varying width
