‘Seistan’ [‎26v] (52/98)

2
The population, though very curious, I found as a rule quiet and well
disposed, even in the larger towns, and this opinion is endorsed by the Protestant
missionaries; the higher officials were invariably courteous and afforded me the
usual facilities.
Of the machinations of the French, whether Consular, Catholic, or
commercial, I heard hut little, and from conversations with those functionaries
and priests that I met, and a perusal of the French colonial press, I gathered
that the local policy was one of words rather than deeds, and that any solid
enterprise was equally remote from the intentions and the interests, if not the
desires, of the Paris Government.
In the north there was even less to he seen of the Russians, although it
had been confidently asserted in Hankow that goods from Moscow and officers
from St. Petersburgh encumbered the streets of Singanfu. On my arrival
there I was informed that there was a shop where formerly a little Russian
cloth could be bought, while a solitary traveller, judged from his language
wffiich no one understood, to be a Russian, had passed through a year before.
This was the foundation of the rumour.
As regards the Japanese, their goods are in most places, though they are
not otherwise to the fore. The Viceroys of Hunan and Hupeh, and of Szechuan,
both have political leanings towards them, and have engaged one or two as
instructors for their troops, but this appears to be the measure of their
influence.
Finally, I found no signs of the Lu Han Railway, or of the Peking
Syndicate in North Honan, while the only foreign imports I saw there were
Japanese and American.
In this Memorandum the Yang-tsze Kiang, as a navigable river, is con
sidered as starting from Chengtu, the capital of Szechuan, and the Kinsha
Kiang is treated as an affluent; Hankow is taken to mark the limit of the
upper and lower valleys, and the British “ sphere of influence ” is assumed to
include, in addition to the geographical catchment area of the river, those pro
vinces defined as pertaining to it by Mr. Brodrick in the House of Commons.
The map used is that by Bretschneider, and the provinces chiefly dealt with are
Hupeh, Hunan, Szechuan, Honan, and Shensi.
By way of preface, the general aspect of the country will be reviewed, the
particular provinces will then be examined in more detail, and, finally, the
existing situation will be summarised. An endeavour will be made, in pre
senting the political and commercial features of the territories under consider
ation, to preserve their unity and, at the same time, to show their relation to
British interests.
China Proper, more usually called the Eighteen Provinces, has been by
nature divided into two parts, which are economically, as they are geologically,
distinct. Richthofen terms them “Loess and Non-Loess China”—for loess,
the sandy loam which the Chinese call “ hoangtu ”, or yellow earth, and which
covers, without any exceptions, the northerly of these two portions, and is no
less conspicuous by its absence in the south, has been the ultimate cause of the
physical and the social conditions which distinguish the one region from the
other.
Starting from the east coast, the line of separation—which is also that
between the bread and the rice-eating population—follows the Lower Yang-tsze
in a westerly direction to Hankow, whence it goes north-west up the Han River
and its tributary, the Tan, to the Tsingling Mountains: there it turns west, and,
following first this range and subsequently that of the Kuen Lun, finally
terminates on the grasslands and plateaux of Tibet. China is thus almost
bisected, and although there are parts to the south where loess is found, and,
similarly, districts lacking it in the north, the line indicated is, for all practical
purposes, exact. The characteristics of the country and the inhabitants, the
methods of agriculture and trade, and the state of prosperity and enlightenment