Opulent in grain-fields,
forests, and minerals, with every facility for commerce, no part of
the empire has a brighter future. So thinly peopled is its northern
portion that it continues to be a vast hunting-ground which supplies
the Chinese market with sables and tiger-skins besides other peltries.
The tiger-skins are particularly valuable as having longer and
richer fur than those of Bengal.
Of the Manchus as a people, I shall speak later on.[*] Those remaining
in their original habitat are extremely rude and ignorant; yet
even these hitherto neglected regions are now coming under the
enlightening influence of a system of government schools.
[Footnote *: Part II. page 140 and 142; part III, pages 267-280]
Mongolia, the largest division of Tartary, if not of the Empire,
is scarcely better known than the mountain regions of Tibet, a
large portion of its area being covered with deserts as uninviting
and as seldom visited as the African Sahara. One route, however,
has been well trodden by Russian travellers, namely, that lying
between Kiachta and Peking.
In the reign of Kanghi the Russians were granted the privilege of
establishing an ecclesiastical mission to minister to a Cossack
garrison which the Emperor had captured at Albazin trespassing on
his grounds. Like another Nebuchadnezzar, he transplanted them
to the soil of China. He also permitted the Russians
[Page 58]
to bring tribute to the "Son of Heaven" once in ten years.
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