CHAPTER IX FORESTRY AND FOREST PRODUCTS THE Chinese have been chopping down their forests for more years than history can remember. They have been using wood for fuel and for building materials and a hundred other things for more than three-thousand years. Wherever and whenever Chinese population-centers shifted into virgin country they acted like a withering curse on the forest lands nearby. Shockingly baldheaded hills in sterile nudity are the dominating feature of Chinese landscapes. There was one place where the forest stood in stately splendor-where the Chinese could not get at it. The Great and Little Khingan ranges on the northwest, north, and northeast, and the Changpai mountains in the upper reaches of the Yalu, the Tumen, and the Sungari, and the district round about Sansing happened to be just that sort of places. If Manchuria is "the Granary of Asia,' she is in a more emphatic sense the treasure house of China's forest wealth. GREAT AND LITTLE KHINGANS In the Aigun, Wuyun, Nunkiang, Lunkiang, Hulun Districts over the Great and Little Khingan Mountains in Amur Province, one estimate puts the number of trees near five and a half billions of more than 108 billion cubic feet. No doubt more romance than scientific data must have entered into the fashioning of this estimate. Yet this is the closest thing to an official figure on the subject; for the estimate was taken from a table prepared by the Civil Administration of the Kwantung Leased Territory. This is the greatest forest wealth of Manchuria: it takes in something like four-fifths of the total. But it should always be kept in mind that all this is in an unexplored region. YALU BASIN By far the most famous timber district of Manchuria is located on the right or Manchurian bank of the Yalu and on both banks of the Hun River, which flows into the Yalu. It covers the forest area of more than 3,000,000 acres with the estimated timber wealth of more than five billion cubic feet. There are two other forest areas in Mukden Province -one that of Sungling and the other covering the mountains Tailing, Fensuiling, and Hamaling, which together are estimated to have something more than one billion cubic feet of timber. CHANGPAI RANGE In Kirin Province, over the Changpai range, in the upper reaches of the Sungari, the Hurka, and the Tumen rivers is the great area of more than 4,800,000 acres of forest with sixteen billion cubic feet of timber. In the Sansing District, stretching away from the Sungari on both banks, there is the area of some 10,000,000 acres with fifteen billion cubic feet of timber. Then there is still another rich area along the Chinese Eastern Railway, and for that reason well known to the outside world, stretching eastward from Harbin to Pogranichnaia over the Changkwangsai mountains, some 5,000,000 acres with about ten billion cubic feet of timber. ESTIMATED FOREST WEALTH In the above estimates the figures covering the Great and Little Khingan range, forest areas and forest wealth should be taken with considerable reserve. With all that, the estimate of a writer who put the total forest area of Manchuria at 31,500,000 acres and the timber wealth upon them at 122,000,000,000 cubic feet seems entirely too low. He seems to have ignored a large portion of the forest areas of the Great and Little Khingans in his summing up. This happens because nobody seems to know exactly or even approximately how much timber there is in that section of North Manchuria. Yet, as a matter of fact, that very section of Manchuria is by far her greatest forest belt. From the point where the River Shilka meets the Argun and gives birth to the Amur, the vast arch of the North Manchurian forest land stretches clean down to the line of the Chinese Eastern Railway both to the southwest along the Great Khingan ranges and to the southeast over the ranges of the Little Khingans. The recent timber estimate for the whole of North Manchuria reaches as high as 136,000,000,000 cubic feet; and the overwhelming proportion of that is to be found in the section mentioned above. Only along the line of the Chinese Eastern in the headwaters of the Yalu in the Great Khingan range in the west and in the belt east of Harbin out to Suifen and Pogranichinaia where the line leaves the Manchurian border for Vladivostok have the forests been worked to any extent. Not more than a thirty-fourth part of the whole forest wealth of North Manchuria, or not more than four billion cubic feet of lumber, has been touched so far. From all this it would appear that the total forest wealth of North and South Manchuria can hardly be less than 150,000,000,000 cubic feet of timber, covering not less than 45,000,000 acres, which is a trifle more than one-fifth of the total area of Manchuria. The forest area of the United States is put at 463,000,000 acres, which is about one-fifth of her total area. Once upon an ancient day a Manchu Emperor looked out upon the forest land of his domain and exclaimed, "Sea of Trees!" To a passing eye Manchuria looks quite as densely covered with forests as the United States. TREES The distinction of the Manchurian forests is the great variety of trees which they contain. One writer puts the different kinds so far discovered at 300. About twenty of them dominate the rest. More than forty per cent. of the Manchurian forests are covered by conifers, and the rest by various broad-leaved trees. Of the conifers, chosen-matsu (Chosen pines, or Pinus Koraiensis) stand out prominently above other members of the pine family. One species of larch called dafurikamatsu (Laris dahurica) raises stately and straight phalanges to challenge the supremacy of the Chosen pines at many spots. Fir, spruce, oak, elm, maple, walnut, lime, willow, and poplar abound. There is a tree called acanthopanax which lifts its head some sixty to seventy feet and affords excellent hardwood lumber. And the birch forests along the Chinese Eastern line and in so many other sections are ever a delight to the eye. Over the Khingan ranges larches and red pines hold their sway. The age of Chosen pines in the Manchurian forests average about 300 years; but they live one and a half times longer than larches. WASTEFUL LOGGING METHOD These Manchurian forests stood undefiled by ax and saw for countless centuries until about seventy years ago. It was then that the first chapter of the story of |