The surface of this province is made up of masses of rugged mountains,
through which the Yangtze has cut its deep and narrow channel. The area
is everywhere intersected by steep-sided valleys and ravines. The
world-famed plain of Chen-tu, the capital, is the only plain of any
size in the province, the system of irrigation employed on it being one
of the wonders of the world. Every food crop flourishes in Szech'wan, an
inexhaustible supply of products of the Chinese pharmacopoeia enrich the
stores and destroy the stomachs of the well-to-do; and with the
exception of cotton, all that grows in Eastern China grows better in
this great Garden of the Empire. Its area is about that of France, its
climate is even superior--a land delightfully _accidentee_. Among the
minerals found are gold, silver, cinnabar, copper, iron, coal and
petroleum; the chief products being opium, white wax, hemp, yellow silk.
Szech'wan is a province rich in salt, obtained from artesian borings,
some of which extend 2,500 feet below the surface, and from which for
centuries the brine has been laboriously raised by antiquated windlass
and water buffalo.
The best conditions of Chinese inns are far and away worse than anything
the traveler would be called upon to encounter anywhere in the British
Isles, even in the most isolated places in rural Ireland.
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