Hopkinsville Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1889-1918, 1899-01-27

Manchuria Is Country Of Great Wealth
and Opportunity.


tinent, writes Capt. Tounghus band,
in the Nineteenth Century, is eolln-
try to which only too little attention
has as yet been paid, and which, on
recount OF its wealth, its favorable
natural position, and the intelligence
Of its Inhabitants, viii attract to IL
self a yearly increasing notice from
Europe, and play no Insignificant
part in the history Of the next few
decades. The recent march Of events
has shown two rising powers pressing
around Manchuria and threatening
to contest its possession with the
seemingly dormant Chinese.
If Manchuria were such wrctcntd-
ly poor country, as, for instance,
Khiva, Merry and Turkestan, and
Others which have fallen TO the lot
of the Russians, comparatively little
attention need be paid to The prog
ress of events in that distant quarter.
of the world. 1t would matter but
little to other European nations
whether the Russians or japanese
did or did not take the country.
But Manchuria is no such desert
country. 1t is. on the contrary,
country Of exceeding richness, and
of promise scarcely less than that Of
the Transvaal itself, and compCrcd
to which the whole Of CentrGi Africa.
from Uganda to Khartoom, is Of pni-
try insignificancc - o. the
timber alone in the vast virgin for
ests which clothr the hilIs'Ges over
thousands Of square miles must be
worth many millions: fer this tim-
Der is OF the most valuable kind, and
besides the ordinary pines, which are
common all over the world, ana which
being fast-crowing arc easily re-
placed when cut down. there are i'm
mense quantities Of hard timber
of oak and elm and wainut--to re-
place which century is required.
and the quantity of which in the
world is rapidly diminishing. + "
Manchuria is equally rich in its
production Of cereals, and in the
southern portion of such crops as n
digo and tobacco.
Such being the climate, the nature
of the country, its soil and produc-
tions, the inhabitants, as might he
expected, are a strong, hardy. vigor-
GUS race, and from the glens of Man
churia have issued three successive
waves OF conquest which have over
run the whole of China. The num-
bers of the original inhabitants have
been augmented by streams of immi-
grafton from China proper, and
these, though slightly less robust
than the original Manchus, are yet
of good and sound physique. They
are the very reverse of impulsive-
cool, calculating, provident and so
economical that not even the manure
off the roads is allowed to be wasted,
and the heat of the fire required for
cooking purposes is carefully utilized
by means of fiues to warm the whole
house.
Their industry is apparent in the
care bestowed upon their fields. In
the summer they work from dawn
till sunset, with brief interval for
the midday meal, and in the winter
they start hours before daybreak on
their long carrying journeys. They
are grave and little given to mirth;
on the whole, law-abiding, amenable
to control, and to the restraints of
social life; if not particularly warm
in their devotion to their children
and to their parents, at any rate not
absolutely callous, and though any
active benevolence is very apparent,
there are, on the ether hand, few symp-
toms of active malevolence. But the
most important trait to notice is their
strong conservatism. What was
good enough for their fathers the
present-day inhabitants think must
be good enough for them. They are
intelligent and quick to grasp simple
ideas. but superstitious and ignorant
Of natural causation; very lacking in
imagination, with high powers of imi-
tation, but no capacity for invention.
They all dress alike, and in the
same way in which they have dressed
for centuries past; there is no differ
ence between one house and another,
and even their carts are all of the
same pattern. The rigid fxity of