I. The _Eighteen Provinces_, including, with trivial additions, the country conquered by the Manchus in 1664. II. _Manchuria_, or the native country of the Manchus, lying north of the Gulf of Liautung as far as the Amur and west of the Usuri River. III. _Colonial Possessions_, including Mongolia, Ílí (comprising Sungaria and Eastern Turkestan), Koko-nor, and Tibet. The first of these divisions alone is that to which other nations have given the name of China, and is the only part which is entirely settled by the Chinese. It lies on the eastern slope of the high table-land of Central Asia, in the south-eastern angle of the continent; and for beauty of scenery, fertility of soil, salubrity of climate, magnificent and navigable rivers, and variety and abundance of its productions, will compare with any portion of the globe. The native name for this portion, as distinguished from the rest, is _Shih-pah Săng_ or the ‘Eighteen Provinces,’ but the people themselves usually mean this part alone by the term _Chung Kwoh_. The area of the Eighteen Provinces is estimated by McCulloch at 1,348,870 square miles, but if the full area of the provinces of Kansuh and Chihlí be included, this figure is not large enough; the usual computation is 1,297,999 square miles; Malte Brun reckons it at 1,482,091 square miles; but the entire dimensions of the Eighteen Provinces, as the Chinese define them, cannot be much under 2,000,000 square miles, the excess lying in the extension of the two provinces mentioned above. This part, consequently, is rather more than two-fifths of the area of the whole empire. The old limits are, however, more natural, and being better known may still be retained. They give nearly a square form to the provinces, the length from north to south being 1,474 miles, and the breadth 1,355 miles; but the diagonal line from the north-east corner to Yunnan is 1,669 miles, and that from Amoy to the north-western part of Kansuh is 1,557 miles. China Proper, therefore, measures about seven times the size of France, and fifteen times that of the United Kingdom; it is nearly half as large as all Europe, which is 3,650,000 square miles. Its area is, however, nearer that of all the States of the American Union lying east of the Mississippi River, with Texas, Arkansas, Missouri and Iowa added; these all cover 1,355,309 square miles. The position of the two countries facing the western borders of great oceans is another point of likeness, which involves considerable similarity in climate; there is moreover a further resemblance between the size of the provinces in China and those of the newer States. ~MOUNTAIN CHAINS.~