The resources of China are greater than those of Africa, and many of them are still absolutely undeveloped. The Chinese peasants, moreover, are among the best agriculturists in the world. As evidence of this assertion, it should be remembered that, by the perfection of their method of cultivation, they extract from the soil of their plains sufficient to enable their rural population to multiply in a manner unknown in the Western world. Certain provinces in the Valley of the Yang-tsze-Kiang—Shan-tung, Hu-pe, Kiang-su, and others—in spite of their being purely agricultural, are as densely peopled as Belgium, and we may further observe that, as is the case throughout the Far East, wherever rice dominates, the mountain regions are almost uninhabited. If the soil is admirably cultivated, the subsoil, on the other hand, is absolutely neglected, and only an insignificant quantity of coal is extracted from the immense coal-beds which cover over 40,000 square miles on the banks of the Yellow River, in the plains of Hu-nan, and under the terraces of Shan-si, which, together with those equally important in the basin of Shan-tung, were so highly extolled by the celebrated traveller Richthofen. The coal-beds in Central China appear to be even more extensive, and the carboniferous basin of Sze-chuan, where there is also petroleum, covers an area equal to half France. The coal-beds of Hu-nan are also very considerable, and minerals are equally abundant. The copper-mines of Yunnan are so rich as to have proved one of the chief inducements that attracted the French to Tongking. Mines of precious ore are known to exist in many other places, but, notwithstanding their very ancient civilization, the Chinese have scarcely touched the wealth beneath their feet. In this respect they have proved themselves inferior to the classical nations of antiquity, and have left their riches to be garnered by foreigners. We can form some idea of the development of which China is susceptible by considering the example of two other Asiatic nations placed in much the same conditions—British India and Japan. India, with all her dependencies, is about a sixth larger than China proper, but contains only about three-quarters of the number of her inhabitants; yet although her subsoil is much less rich and her population far more indolent than the Chinese, she carries on double the trade with Europe that the Chinese Empire does. Japan, nine times smaller and nine times less peopled than China, but reformed by an enlightened Government and by the introduction of European methods, has seen her commerce rise in thirty years from £5,000,000 to £44,000,000, more than three-quarters higher than that of her enormous but stationary neighbour.