bles, the valley suffers from many severe floods from the Nonni and its branches in the rainy season.

The Sungari Plain extends on both sides of the great stream from Petuna, near which it receives the waters of the Nonni, for hundreds of miles to the point where the Sungari empties into the Amur. The lands about Petuna and Harbin are somewhat hilly and rolling. The level plain of the Sungari valley is along its northern bank, adjoining the plain of the Hulan valley and the district that spreads between Sansing and Paiyangmu. Along the southern bank of the river, level lands are few and far between. This is also true of the section between Sansing and Tassaka near where the Sungari joins the Amur.

There are a few other plains in Manchuria, such as the valleys of the Tumen and the Yalu and along the shores of the Yellow Sea, but they are of minor proportions, not to be compared with the great plains described above.

COAST LINE

The coast line of Manchuria from the mouth of the Yalu on the east to Shanhaikwan, where the Eternal Wall of China meets the waters of the Gulf of Chihli and marks the farthest reach of the southern toe of Manchuria, is about as unemotional and regular as a model family man. No wealth of secret inlets, sheltered bays, or deep-bosomed harbors is there to lure the mariner, except at the tip end of the Liaotung Peninsula (which is leased to the Japanese) with its Port Arthur and the Port of Dairen. The coastal waters are also shallow, both on the Yellow Sea and on the Gulf of Chihli. There is no thirty-foot depth within two miles of the shore except at the two ports mentioned.

These are some of the natural factors which conspired to make the Port of Dairen rise from the position

Central Plaza in Dairen from which the streets radiate like spokes of a wheel

of forty-second among the continental ports of China in 1907 to the second place it holds in recent years— second only to Shanghai.

FORESTS

To-day Manchuria ranks as the most important of all the timber regions in the whole of China. In South Manchuria the lower slopes of the Changpai range along the Sungari and in the upper reaches of the Tumen are covered with forests which rank high among the timber lands of Manchuria. Standing next to this section are the Yalu and the Hun forests: they cover the mountains amid which the two rivers rise. In North Manchuria the timber land along the Chinese Eastern Railway line east of Harbin, especially about Hailin, is important, and the Sansing District ranks with it. In short, excellent forests cover all the mountain districts from the border of Chosen in the east to the boundary of Kirin and Mukden Provinces on the west. The forests reach southward down to the mouth of the Yalu. Although in the lower reaches of the Yalu River the tops of the Changpai peaks are all bald, as one comes down the heights he finds that all the skirts of the mountains are thickly wooded. The Kirin forests afford a cut of 25,000 board feet an acre, according to a trustworthy report. The trees are mostly of the pine family.

In Manchuria some 300 species of trees are known, but the varieties which dominate the forests there are not more than a dozen or so. Chosen pine occupies perhaps 60 per cent. of the forest area there, on which grow also Chosen fir, Ezo pine, Mongolian oak, Manchurian and Amur limes, Manchurian maples, and walnut. Among the hardwoods, besides oak, maple, walnut, and lime already mentioned, there are acanthopanax (a tree which usually stands 60 to 70 feet in height), ash,

cork-tree, and birch. Of these the common oak and another kind of oak called "nara" by the Japanese are dominant over the Changpai range. Some years ago the Japanese experts connected with the civil administration of the Leased Territory of Kwantung estimated the number of trees in the forests of Mukden Province at about 78,400,000 and the timber at slightly over twobillion cubic feet. For Kirin Province the figures were 100,600,000 trees and more than 1,663,000,000 cubic feet, and for Amur Province 6,299,000,000 trees and 126,115,000,000 cubic feet. The Great and Small Khingans carry about four-fifths of the entire timber of Manchuria. The pine trees in these forests are by far the most useful timber: they often attain the circumference of 13 to 14 feet and grow to more than 100 feet tall.

CLIMATE

Manchuria lies between 39 degrees and 53° 30' north latitude-within the same parallels as North America from Baltimore to the northern tip of Newfoundland, or from Cincinnati to Port Nelson on Hudson Bay. Within the same latitudes lie the great cities of Naples, Madrid, London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. But the climatic conditions of Manchuria would give decidedly a new experience to the peoples of Naples and other Mediterranean ports of France and Italy. There are three distinct climates in Manchuria. Along the coast the sea makes conditions different from those of the mountain districts and forest regions, and the great plains have a still different climate of their own. In the coldest month of the year there, namely January, the temperature at the Port of Dairen averages 24° F. In the hottest month, August, it averages 76° F. At Harbin, 578 miles to the north of Dairen and standing on the western section of the mighty Sungari plain, the average tem