“Backward doesn’t express it, lieutenant. They are so out of date that they are actually musty. And the worst of it is, because their history dates back so much further than ours,—several thousand years before Christ,—they imagine they know it all and are really a superior people.”
“I am almost ashamed to confess it, but I am very backward on the geography of China,” went on Gilbert. “I know it’s a mighty big country and swarming with millions of people, and that is about all I do know.”
“Yes, it is a big country; for its area is about five millions of square miles, although its original eighteen provinces are only about two millions of square miles in extent,—some geographers say a million and a half. The population of the provinces is reckoned at a hundred and seventy-five million. But this is mere guess-work, for China has never taken a census.”
“With so many people, there ought to be many large cities.”
“No, the large cities are but few in number. The largest, of course, is Pekin, the capital, on the Pei-Ho, which contains probably a million and a half to two million inhabitants; and the next is Shanghai, the great sea-port town. Pekin cannot be reached by large boats; and its sea-port, so to speak, is Tien-Tsin, which is also on the Pei-Ho, not many miles from the Gulf of Pechili.”
“Then, if there are not many large cities, there must be a host of small ones.”
“China, so I have read, is a country of villages; and there are vast territories where these villages, each containing a hundred or two hundred inhabitants, are less than half a mile apart. You see the Chinese farmer doesn’t live on his farm excepting during the time he has to watch his crops, to keep them from being stolen. He lives in the village, along with all of his neighboring farmers; and all of them go out to work every morning, taking all their tools with them, and even the bucket and windlass for the well, and return at nightfall.”
“I think I should rather live on the farm. We always lived on our plantation in Virginia, before we moved to Richmond.”
“And so did my folks live on their farm in the Mohawk Valley, New York State, Pennington. But you must remember that, with so many people to feed, farming lands in China are valuable; and so they can’t afford land for farm-houses or out-buildings or even for fences. Many a farm is not over half an acre in extent, and that has to support a family of six or eight.”
“Phew! We had over two hundred acres in Virginia!”