Provinces_

The empire consists of five grand divisions: China Proper, Manchuria,
Mongolia, Turkestan, and Tibet. In treating of this huge conglomerate
it will be most convenient to begin with the portion that gives
name and character to the whole.

Of China Proper it may be affirmed that the sun shines nowhere on
an equal area which combines so many of the conditions requisite
for the support of an opulent and prosperous people. Lying between
18° and 49° north latitude, her climate is alike exempt from the
fierce heat of the torrid zone and the killing cold of the frigid
regions. There is not one of her provinces in which wheat, rice,
and cotton, the three staples of food and clothing, may not be
cultivated with more or less success; but in the southern half
wheat gives place to rice, while in the north cotton yields to
silk and hemp. In the south cotton is king and rice is queen of
the fields.

Traversed in every direction by mountain ranges of moderate elevation
whose sides are cultivated in
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terraces to such a height as to present the appearance of hanging
gardens, China possesses fertile valleys in fair proportion, together
with vast plains that compare in extent with those of our American
prairie states. Furrowed by great rivers whose innumerable affluents
supply means of irrigation and transport, her barren tracts are
few and small.

A coast-line of three thousand miles indented with gulfs, bays,