h their loads
being washed away by rivers where in the dry season there had been the
roads.

The great lines of Chinese travel, so often impassable, might be made
permanently passable if the governor of a province chose to compel the
several district magistrates along the line to see that these important
arteries are kept free from standing water, with ditches in good order
at all seasons. But for the village roads--during my travels over which
I have come across very few that could from a Western standpoint be
called roads--there is absolutely no hope until such time as the Chinese
village may come dimly to the apprehension that what is for the
advantage of the one is for the advantage of all, and that wise
expenditure is the truest economy--an idea of which it has at the
present moment as little conception as of the average thought of the
Englishman.

A hundred li to the east of Hong-shiih-ai, over two impassable mountain
ranges, are some considerable mines, with antiquated brass and copper
smelting works, and this place, K'ung-shan by name, with Tong-ch'uan-fu,
forms an important center. As is well known, all copper of Yuen-nan goes
to Peking as the Government monopoly, excepting the enormous amount
stolen and smuggled into every town in the province.[Y]

The smelting is of the roughest, though they are at the present moment
laying in English machinery, and the Chinese in charge is under the
impression that he can speak English; he, however, makes a hopeless
jargon of it. This mining locality is sunk in the deepest degradation.
Men and women live more as wild beasts than as human beings, and should
any be unfortunate enough to die, their corpses are allowed to lie in
the mines. Who is there that could give his time and energy to the
removal of a dead man? Tong-ch'uan-fu should become an important town if
the rich mineral country of which it is the pivot were properly opened
up. Several times I have visited the works in this city, which, under
the charge of a small mandarin from Szech'wan, can boast only the most
primitive and inadequate machinery, of German make. A huge engine was
running as a kind of pump for the accumulation of air, which was passed
through a long thin pipe to the three furnaces in the outer courtyard.
The furnaces were mud-built, and were fed with charcoal (the most
expensive fuel in the district), the maximum of pure metal being only
1,300 catties per day. The ore, which has been roughly smelt