OPENING CHINA.

Waikato Times, Volume VIII, Issue 436, 6 April 1875, Page 2

OPENING CHINA.

A. statement recently made by Mr Colton Baiter, formerly United States' Consul for the treaty ports of the Yang-tse-Kiang, in relation to the antiquity of the practice of pisciculture in China, has been disputed by Professor Buird, the United States Fish Commissioner. Mr Salter, in replying, asks th« scientific and commercial men of New York to aid him in organizing an expedition for a thorough exploration of the Yang-tße-Ki:\ng, which, he observes, is over 3,000 miles long, and above Hankow (650 miles from s'ianghai) is virtually closed to all foreign trade. He says :— "On that great river, the « Child of the Ocean, 1 as the Chinese poetically term it, there are perhaps 1 00 cities with dense populations, all easier for trade. In one place on the river the piscicultural nurseries line the banks for 50 mi'e-«. Many druges of mreat value, wre found: the so-called Turkey rhubarb ; the Spanish fly, indigenous to the western Provinces of China, sent across the p^insof Asia centuries ago and planted in Europe. The castor oil, so repulsive to the taste here, is as delicatethere as the finest olive oil, and is used for cooking fish. It is a wonderful land and full of mysteries. If Professor Baird will accompany me, 1 will bliow him in Southern China a cotton gin precisely similar to the one gaid to have been invented by the American Whitney. He will find all sorts of inventions and discoveries made 40 •centuries ajfo in Cathay, yet claimed to-day as the inventions of our race in Europe and this country. Even the familiar tobacco and |>otato, which Sir Walter Raleigh supposed were the sole productions of America, may | be found growing- wild in China, along w:th cotton I (short staple), the sweet potato, tbe maize, white and yellow corn, and the familiar buckwheat, so dear to the average American (soaked in butter, fat, and syi-np) in winter time, and so had for his pour stomach', All these grains and cereals were doubtless carrie I over Ifchrinsj's Strait by the I noruad tribes of the great Mongolian plains in some far-forgotten period of the world's strange history, and die Chinaman of those ages became the ancestor of the American Indian to-day. In North China I can show Professor B drd a most ingenious adaptation of means to the end in the shape of a j>eculiar barrow, with the whe-1 over the centre of the place for fv> ight — perhaps a family of half a dozen or so, or a load of these so-called American cereals — going to the market with these motive powers all working in perfect harmony — viz-, a donkey a-heui tugging at the b tin boo roj>e, a sort of lateen sail to catch the br eze that is always blowing ove* tlie vast plains of j Mongolia and Matiohooria, and the* patient China- 1 man htemug the unique affair, an.l' aiding its pro- I gress, if necessary, by "a trot of about four miles an [ hour. There are vast puobleius to be solved in this, the oldest. Empire in 4tiH world, with a sober, temperate, and industrious people of 400,000,0 0 of souls : but the development of the coalfields of the co Hitrv and tbe introduction of our improved machinery, .steamers, mills, ;&c,; &c, ought to enlist in the cause the solid men of New York. Ships are despatched every week from Cardiff and Liverpool with awl for California a long and dangerous journey of 20,000 miles, and here are the vast coalfields of China — virgin fields — only 6,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean. Scientific mining is, I believe, entirely unknown there. Af w thousands spent now would be returned in millions in a few years. America ought to lead in China. At present we | ouly drift along and lose golden opportunities daily." j