desolate wastes, and the scattered inhabitants are wild and
uncouth and free.

Manchuria, however, is far from being the barren country
that so many imagine it to be. It is, in many respects, like
Canada, a region embracing about 370,000 square miles and of
almost boundless agricultural and mineral wealth. The
population, save in the southern parts, is not yet dense but it is
rapidly increasing.

But in central and eastern China, the conditions are very
different. Here the population can only be indicated by a
figure so large that it is almost impossible for us to comprehend
it. Consider that the eighteen provinces alone, with an
area about equal to that part of the United States east of the
Mississippi River, have eight times the population of that
part of our country.


``There are twice as many people in China as on the four continents--
Africa, North and South America and Oceanica. Every third person
who toils under the sun and sleeps under God's stars is a Chinese.
Every third child born into the world looks into the face of a Chinese
mother. Every third pair given in marriage plight their troth in a
Chinese cup of wine. Every third orphan weeping through the day
every third widow wailing through the night are in China. Put them in
rank, joining hands, and they will girdle the globe ten times at the
equator with living, beating human hearts. Constitute them pilgrims and let
two thousand go past every day and night under the sunlight and
under the solemn stars, and you must hear the ceaseless tramp, tramp, of