tea and metals. The opium-yielding poppy grows almost everywhere. The celebrated tea of the south-east is in great request, being considered by the Chinese themselves superior to all other qualities of tea throughout the empire. Its cultivation offers no difficulties, the high price it commands outside of the region being solely due to the costliness of transport. But it is the metal-trade which will in all probability be the prominent feature of commerce. The great tin-*mines have supplied the whole of China from time immemorial; copper abounds throughout the province; lead, gold, silver, iron, and last, but not least, coal, make up the list. Curiously enough, the vast Chinese empire includes no other truly metalliferous province except the bordering region of Western Ssu-ch'nan, geologically, though not administratively, a part of Yunnan; nothing but the inaccessibility, and too-often disturbed and lawless condition, of the country has thus far hindered its mines from becoming sources of really incalculable wealth to the province, to the Chinese empire at large, and, by participation, to foreign commerce."
The affluent circumstances of the peasantry in the southern districts are in marked contrast with those of the north. The women do not compress their feet. Many of the men bear the Muslim's physique and features. Indeed, before the mer-
