The products of this fertile region are varied and abundant. Rice and wheat alternate each other in summer and winter, but the amount of land producing food is barely sufficient for its dense population; pulse, barley, maize, ground-nuts, sorghum, sweet and common potatoes, buckwheat and tobacco, are each raised for home consumption. Sugar, hemp, oils of several kinds, cotton, and fruits complete the list of plants mostly grown for home use. The exports consist of raw and woven silk, of which more is sent abroad than from any province; salt, opium, musk, croton (_tung_) oil, gentian, rhubarb, tea, coal, spelter, copper, iron, and insect wax, are all grown or made for other regions. The peace which Sz’chuen enjoyed while other provinces were ravaged by rebels, has tended to develop all its products, and increase its abundance. The climate of this region favors the cultivation of the hillsides, which are composed of disintegrated sandstones, because the moist and mild winters bring forward the winter crops; snow remains only a few days, if it fall at all, and wheat is cut before May. The summer rains and freshets furnish water for the rice fields by filling the streams on a thousand hills. This climate is a great contrast to the dry regions further north, and it is subject to less extremes of temperature and moisture than Yunnan south of it. When this usual experience is altered by exceptional dry or wet seasons, the people are left without food, and their wants cannot be supplied by the abundance of other provinces, owing to the slowness of transit. Brigandage, rioting, cannibalism, and other violence then add to the misery of the poor, and to the difficulty of government. ~CHINGTU AND THE MIN VALLEY.~ Chingtu, the capital, lies on the River Min, in the largest plain in the province, roughly measuring a hundred miles one way, and fifty the other, conspicuous for its riches and populousness. The inhabitants are reckoned to number 3,500,000 souls. This city has been celebrated from the earliest days, but received its present name of the ‘Perfect Capital’ when Liu Pí made it his residence. Its population approaches a million, and its walls, shops, yamuns, streets, warehouses, and suburbs, all indicate its wealth and political importance. Marco Polo calls it Sindafu, and the province Acbalec Manzi, describing the fine stone bridge, half a mile long, with a roof resting on marble pillars, under which “trade and industry is carried on,”[78] which spans the Kian-suy, _i.e._, the Yangtsz’, as the Min is still often termed. The remarkable cave houses of the old inhabitants still attract the traveller’s notice as he journeys up to Chingtu, along its banks.