and mineral wealth. The population, save in the southern parts, is not yet dense but it is rapidly increasing.

But in central and eastern China, the conditions are very different. Here the population can only be indicated by a figure so large that it is almost impossible for us to comprehend it. Consider that the eighteen provinces alone, with an area about equal to that part of the United States east of the Mississippi River, have eight times the population of that part of our country.

``There are twice as many people in China as on the four continents— Africa, North and South America and Oceanica. Every third person who toils under the sun and sleeps under God's stars is a Chinese. Every third child born into the world looks into the face of a Chinese mother. Every third pair given in marriage plight their troth in a Chinese cup of wine. Every third orphan weeping through the day every third widow wailing through the night are in China. Put them in rank, joining hands, and they will girdle the globe ten times at the equator with living, beating human hearts. Constitute them pilgrims and let two thousand go past every day and night under the sunlight and under the solemn stars, and you must hear the ceaseless tramp, tramp, of the weary, pressing, throbbing throng for five hundred years.''[2]

[2] The Rev. J. T. Gracey, D. D., ``China in Outline,'' p. 10.

There is something amazing in the immensity of the population. Great cities are surprisingly numerous. In America, a city of nearly a million inhabitants is a wonderful place and all the world is supposed to know about it. But while Canton and Tien-tsin are tolerably familiar names, how many in the United States ever heard of Hsiang-tan-hsien ? Yet Hsiang-tan- hsien is said to have 1,000,000 inhabitants, while within comparatively short distances are other great cities and innumerable villages. In the Swatow region, within a territory a hundred and fifty miles long and fifty miles wide, there are no less than ten walled cities of from 40,000 to 250,000 inhabitants, besides hundreds of towns and villages ranging from a few hundred to 25,000 or 30,000 people. Men never tire of writing about the population adjacent to New York, Boston and Chicago. But in five weeks' constant journeying through the interior of the Shantung Province, there was hardly an hour in which multitudes were not in sight. There are no scattered farmhouses as in America, but the people live in villages and towns, the latter strongly walled and even the former often have a mud wall. As the country is comparatively level, it was easy to count them, and as a rule there were a dozen or more in plain view. I recall a memorable morning. It was Friday, June 28, 1901. We had risen early, and by daylight we had breakfasted, and started our carts and litters. In our enjoyment of the cool, delicious morning air, we walked for several li. Just before the sun rose, we crossed a low ridge and from its crest, I counted no less than thirty villages in front of us, while behind there were about as many more, the average population being apparently about 500 each. For days at a time, my road lay through the narrow, crowded street of what seemed to be an almost continuous village, the intervening farms being often hardly more than a mile in width.

Imagine half the population of the United States packed into the single state of Missouri and an idea of the situation will be obtained, for with an area almost equal to that of Missouri, Shantung has no less than 38,247,900 inhabitants. It is the most densely populated part of China. But the Province of Shan-si is as thickly settled as Hungary. Fukien and Hupeh have about as many inhabitants to the square mile as England. Chih-li is as populous as France and Yun-nan as Bulgaria.

The density of China's population may be better realized by a glance at the following detailed comparison between the population of Chinese provinces and the population of similar areas in the United States:

                                 Area
 Provinces Square miles Population

 Hupeh, 71,410 35,280,685
 Ohio and Indiana 76,670 5,864,720
 Honan, 67,940 35,316,800
 Missouri, 68,735 2,679,184
 Cheh-kiang, 36,670 11,580,692
 Kentucky, 40,000 1,858,635
 Kiang-si, 69,480 26,532,125
 Kentucky and Tennessee, 81,750 3,626,252
 Kwei-chou, 67,160 7,650,292
 Virginia and West Virginia, 64,770 2,418,774
 Yun-nan, 146,680 12,324,574
 Michigan and Wisconsin, 111,880 3,780,769
 Fukien, 46,320 22,876,540
 Ohio, 40,760 3,762,316
 Chih-li, 115,800 20,937,000
 Georgia, 50,980 1,837,353
 Shantung, 55,970 38,247,900
 New England, 62,000 4,700,945
 Shan-si, 81,830 12,200,456
 Illinois, 56,000 3,826,85l
 Shen-si, 75,270 8,450,182
 Nebraska, 76,840 1,058,910
 Kan-su, 125,450 10,385,376
 California, 155,980 1,208,130
 Sze-chuen, 218,480 68,724,890
 Ohio, Ind., Ill., Ky., 173,430 11,350,219
 Ngan-hwei, 54,810 23,670,314
 New York, 47,600 5,997,853
 Klang-su, 38,600 13,980,235
 Pennsylvania, 44,985 5,258,014
 Kwan-tung and Hainan, 99,970 31,865,251
 Kansas, 81,700 1,427,096
 Kwang-si, 77,200 5,142,330
 Minnesota, 79,205 1,301,826
 Hunan, 83,380 22,169,673
 Louisiana, 45,000 1,110,569

Perhaps the most thoroughly typical city in China is Canton. The approach by way of the West River from Hongkong gives the traveller a view of some of the finest scenery in China. The green rice-fields, the villages nestling beneath the groves, the stately palm-trees, the quaint pagodas, the broad, smooth reaches of the river reflecting the glories of sunset and moon- rises and the noble hills in the background combine to form a scene worth journeying far to see.

But Canton itself is unique among the world's great cities, and the most sated traveller cannot fail to find much that will interest him. After much journeying in China, we thought we had seen its typical places, but no one has seen China until he has visited Canton. With an estimated population of 1,800,000, it is the metropolis of the Empire. The number of people per acre may be less than in some parts of the East Side in New York, for the houses are only one story in height. But the crowding is amazing. The streets are mere alleys from four to eight feet wide, lined with open-front shops, so filled overhead with perpendicular signs and cross coverings of bamboo poles and mattings that they are in as perpetual shade as an African forest, and so choked with people that men often had to back into a shop to let our chairs pass. No wheeled vehicle can enter those corkscrew streets and