After Moukden, the most remarkable towns are Ghirin, surrounded by high wooden palisades, and Ningouta, the native place of the reigning Imperial family. Lao-yan, Kai-Tcheou, and Kin-Tcheou, are remarkable for the extensive commerce their maritime position brings them.
Mantchouria, watered by a great number of streams and rivers, is a country naturally fertile. Since the cultivation has been in the hands of the Chinese, the soil has been enriched by a large number of the products of the interior. In the southern part, they cultivate successfully the dry rice, or that which has no need of watering, and the Imperial rice, discovered by the Emperor Khang-Hi. These two sorts of rice would certainly succeed in France. They have also abundant harvests of millet, of Kao-Léang or Indian corn (Holcus Sorghum), from which they distil excellent brandy; sesamum, linseed, hemp, and tobacco, the best in the whole Chinese empire.
The Mantchourians pay especial attention to the cultivation of the herbaceous-stemmed cotton plant, which produces cotton in extraordinary abundance. A Meou of these plants, a space of about fifteen square feet, ordinarily produces 2,000 lbs. of cotton. The fruit of the cotton-tree grows in the form of a cod or shell, and attains the size of a hazel-nut. As it ripens, the cod opens, divides into three parts, and develops three or four small tufts of cotton which contain the seeds. In order to separate the seed, they make use of a sort of little bow, firmly strung, the cord of which vibrating over the cotton tufts removes the seeds, of which a portion is retained for next year’s sowing, and the rest is made into oil, resembling linseed oil. The upper portion of Mantchouria, too cold to grow cotton, has immense harvests of corn.
Besides these productions, common to China, Mantchouria possesses three treasures [105] peculiar to itself: jin-seng, sable fur, and the grass Oula.
The first of these productions has been long known in Europe, though our learned Academy there ventured some years ago to doubt its existence. Jin-seng is perhaps the most considerable article of Mantchourian commerce. Throughout China there is no chemist’s shop unprovided with more or less of it.
The root of jin-seng is straight, spindle-shaped, and very knotty; seldom so large as one’s little finger, and in length from two to three inches. When it has undergone its fitting preparation, its colour
is a transparent white, with sometimes a slight red or yellow tinge. Its appearance, then, is that of a branch of stalactite.
The Chinese report marvels of the jin-seng, and no doubt it is, for Chinese organization, a tonic of very great effect for old and weak persons; but its nature is too heating, the Chinese physicians admit, for the European temperament, already, in their opinion, too hot. The price is enormous, and doubtless its dearness contributes, with a people like the Chinese, to raise its celebrity so high. The rich and the Mandarins probably use it only because it is above the reach of other people, and out of pure ostentation.
The jin-seng, grown in Corea, and there called Kao-li-seng, is of very inferior quality to that of Mantchouria.
The second special treasure of Eastern Tartary is the fur of the sable, which, obtained by the hunters with immense labour and danger, is of such excessive price that only the princes and great dignitaries of the empire can purchase it. The grass called Oula, the third specialty of Mantchouria, is, on the contrary, of the commonest occurrence; its peculiar property is, that if put into your shoes, it communicates to the feet a soothing warmth, even in the depth of winter.