and purplish pink, and with the exception of a seedless kind, they are large in size. They are much sweeter than the Japanese variety and have no bitter taste. Moreover, they have an admirable quality of keeping for a long time. They have another quality which makes them valuable as a commercial article: they have thick skin. Their skin is tougher than that of the general run of grapes found in American markets. Dragons' Eyes, Pink-chicken Hearts, and the kinds which resemble Muscat Hamburg, Black Hamburg, and Gros Colman are among the leading types of Manchurian grapes. Apples are plentiful in Manchuria and are excellent both in appearance and in taste. They are entirely different from the fruits common to American and European markets. Although they are not as large as some of the California and Arkansas products, they are larger than those one finds in Japan and in Chosen and other parts of China. The flesh is as white as cotton and sweet and juicy. They do not have the sour taste so common to other oriental apples and some American. This sweet taste of the fruit is prized by the Chinese above all else. Peaches are another fruit crop which does well in South Manchuria. They are cultivated almost everywhere in Eastern Asia; but nowhere with better result than in South Manchuria. The flavor of the Manchurian fruit commands a high regard wherever they are sold. Persimmons are not seen much in Manchuria. Climatic conditions there are not favorable for them. There are no accurate statistics of the fruit-production of Manchuria. One Chinese official figure credits the Province of Mukden with 16,000,000 pounds of various fruits. The same authority figures the total fruit-production of Kirin Province at 610,000 pounds, and that of Amur Province at 100,000 a year. After making an exhaustive study extending over many years, the experts of the South Manchuria Railway are optimistic over the future of fruit-production in South Manchuria. Year in and year out, they are giving the orchardists the benefit of their scientific experiments with all sorts of fruit-trees. In addition to this educational service, they have already distributed, absolutely without cost, to various orchards, no less than 400,000 saplings. CHAPTER VIII ANIMALS AND ANIMAL PRODUCTS WE have already seen that the majority of the Manchu were huntsmen, warriors, and herdsmen. Time was, indeed, and not so many centuries ago, when the vast steppes along the Mongolian border and over practically all of the present Amur Province, up the valley of the Nonni and the plains to the west of the Sungari valley, where Kirin Province loses itself in the open stretches of Eastern Inner Mongolia, there was nothing but a sweep of grazing-ground reaching from sun-up to sundown. The steady northward march of farmer immigrants from Shantung and from Chihli has brought a large section of the wild land under the hoe. Still the memory of the pastoral age is plainly etched along the border of Mongolia this very day. As the Chinese farmers have pushed their ever-victorious march into the heart of Manchuria, the old style herdsmen have gradually receded: many of them have disappeared. There are comparatively few Manchus who are devoting themselves exclusively to stock-raising nowadays. That business has been combined with farming by the Chinese invaders; and that combination remains all over Manchuria. The number of head of live-stock that an average Manchurian farmer keeps is comparatively greater than in other sections of China. One Japanese writer, as the result of his first-hand investigations along this line, declares that the average number of domestic animals kept by a Manchurian farmer figures out something like this: 5.8 head of horses, mules, and donkeys; 1.5 head of cattle; 11.1 pigs; and 6 domestic fowls. I believe these figures hold true with middlegrade farmers, but hardly with the general average when all the smaller ones are taken into the count. MANCHURIAN AND MONGOLIAN PONIES Mongolia and Manchuria are the original home of the ponies which are world-beaters in their power of endurance and their ability to survive on coarse and scanty feed. The near-World Empire of the great Kublai Khan was founded on the Mongolian pony. There is very little fable about this statement. It was the great Khan's cavalry, and not his infantry, which swept everything before it far beyond the Danube. It was mounted on the Mongolian pony. He is small; his low forelegs, high stern, and comparatively long trunk make him no prize-winner at a beauty show. But when the whole world is fast locked in ice and an arctic blizzard tunes up over a thousand-mile stretch of snowwhitened Manchurian and Mongolian steppes, his shaggy and stubborn form has all the appearances of a worldconqueror. The least tribute one can pay him is to say that he is the ancestor of practically all north-Asian horses. The Manchurian horses come largely from the northeastern corner of Amur Province, from the Tsitsihar, Hailar, and Manchuli districts; but South Manchuria draws most of its stock from Eastern Inner Mongolia. The districts around Nungan and Changchun have long been famous for their native breed of horses, also. The statistical figures of Manchurian horses vary as vastly as any other figures about such things. A Chinese official estimate for 1918 puts the total number of horses for all China at 4,302,321, and for the Three Eastern Provinces, that is, Manchuria, at 2,190,231. A later figure |