# Littell's Living Age/Volume 138/Issue 1789/Miscellany

​In the latter part of January and in February last Mr. G. J. Morrison, of Shanghai, made an interesting journey overland from Hankow to Canton. The distance in a straight line is about five hundred and twenty-five miles, and he estimates that an ordinary route would be less than seven hundred miles, though by the route he took it was eight hundred and sixty miles. On the whole, Mr. Morrison does not appear to have experienced any very grave difficulty with the natives during his journey; the people in the southern part of the province of Hupei were very civil and not very inquisitive; but as he got into Hunan, the population of which is notoriously turbulent, he remarked a great difference. The main portion of his land journey was through a district which had not been visited by a foreigner "within the memory of the oldest inhabitant," and the natives — as is always the case in out-of-the-way parts of China — were most anxious to see the stranger. Mr. Morrison’s great trouble appears to have been with his maps, and this was especially the case where the provinces of Hunan and Kwang-tung meet. "The Chinese maps of this district," he says, "are very incorrect, and some foreign maps are worse. The fact that along the north of Kwangtung there is a range of mountains, but that this range does not form the watershed, has been puzzling to geographers. Ichang, which is on the south side of the pass, is still in Hunan, and is situated on the head waters of an affluent of the North River of Kwangtung. This affluent runs in a narrow gorge through the range above referred to." The country through which Mr. Morrison passed on his journey presented many points of interest. Near Wuchang, on the right bank of the Yang-tsze, the land is low and subject to floods, but a short distance to the south it becomes undulating. A little to the west of Puki, on the borders of the great tea-districts, as elsewhere in Hunan, a large quantity of tea-oil is made; the plants from which the seeds are obtained grow about eight or nine feet high, and are more straggling than the tea-shrub. The Siang River, which flows through Hunan, Mr. Morrison found to be in some places nearly a mile broad; but its usual width, when the water is low, is about one-third of a mile. At certain seasons vessels of considerable size are able to ascend as far as Changsha, the capital of the province of Hunan, which is a large and apparently prosperous place. Siangtan, a great trading-place further on, though only a third-class city, is larger than Changsha, and its population is estimated by the Chinese at one million, which, no doubt, is an exaggeration. In the neighborhood of the borders of Kwangtung the country is bleak and uninteresting. The road over the Che Ling Pass, which is by no means steep, is crowded with traffic, tea-oil, tobacco, etc., going south, and salt and Canton goods going north. The absence of trees is very noticeable both in Hunan and Kwangtung; in the latter the traveller sees the hills for miles denuded of every tree, but in Hunan some attempts are being made at replanting. The part of Mr. Morrison’s journey which interested and astonished him most, was the examination of the coal-fields of Hunan and Kwangtung; but it was with very great difficulty that he obtained permission to visit one mine. He noticed that there, as in all Chinese mines, the great want was a good road, which seriously interferes with the output of coal. Nature.