The barren parts of the low lands lying between the eastern shores of China and the Indus bear a small proportion to the riches of a soil vivified by tropical warmth and watered by the periodical inundations of the mighty rivers that burst from the icy caverns of Tibet and the Himalaya. On the contrary, the favoured regions in that part of the low lands lying between the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates, and the Atlas mountains, are small when compared with the immense expanse of the Arabian and African deserts, scorched and calcined by an equatorial sun. The blessing of a mountain-zone, pouring out its everlasting treasures of moisture, the life-blood of the soil, is nowhere more strikingly exhibited than in the contrast formed by these two regions of the globe. The Tartar country of Mandshur, watered by the river Amour, but little known to Europeans, lies immediately south of the Yablonnoi branch of the Altaï chain, and consequently partakes of the desert aspect of Siberia, and, in its northern parts, even of the Great Gobi. It is partly intersected by mountains, and covered by dense forests; nevertheless, oats grow in the plains, and even wheat in sheltered places. Towards Corea the country is more fertile; in that peninsula there are cultivated plains at the base of its central mountain-range. China is the most productive country on the face of the earth; an alluvial plain of 210,000 square miles, formed by one of the most extensive river systems in the old world, occupies its eastern part. This plain, seven times the size of Lombardy, is no less fertile, and perfectly irrigated by canals. The Great Canal traverses the eastern part of the plain for 700 miles, of which 500 are in a straight line of considerable breadth, with a current in the greater part of it. Most part of the plain is in rice and garden ground, the whole cultivated with the spade. The tea-plant grows on a low range of hills between the 30th and 32d parallels of north latitude, an offset from the Pe-ling chain. The cold in winter is much greater than in the corresponding European latitudes, and the heat in summer is proportionally excessive. The Indo-Chinese peninsula, lying between China and the river Brahmapootra, has an area of 77,700 square miles, and projects 1500 miles into the ocean. The plains lying between the offsets descending from the east end of the Himalaya, and which divide it longitudinally, as before mentioned, are very extensive. The Birman empire alone, which occupies the valley of the Irrawaddy, is said to be as large as France, and not less fertile, especially its southern part, which is the granary of the empire. Magnificent rivers intersect the alluvial plains, whose soil they have brought down from the table-land of Tibet, and still continue to deposit in great quantities in the deltas at their mouths.