If You Supply The Fire With Them At Night, And See That They Are
Well Kindled, You Will Find Them Still Alight In The Morning; And They
Make Such Capital Fuel That No Other Is Used Throughout The Country.
It is
true that they have plenty of wood also, but they do not burn it, because
those stones burn better and cost less.[NOTE 1]
[Moreover with that vast number of people, and the number of hot baths
that they maintain - for every one has such a bath at least three times a
week, and in winter if possible every day, whilst every nobleman and man
of wealth has a private bath for his own use - the wood would not suffice
for the purpose.]
NOTE 1. - There is a great consumption of coal in Northern China,
especially in the brick stoves, which are universal, even in poor houses.
Coal seems to exist in every one of the eighteen provinces of China, which
in this respect is justly pronounced to be one of the most favoured
countries in the world. Near the capital coal is mined at Yuen-ming-yuen,
and in a variety of isolated deposits among the hills in the direction of
the Kalgan road, and in the district round Siuen-hwa-fu. (Sindachu of
Polo, ante ch. lix.) But the most important coal-fields in relation to the
future are those of Shan-tung Hu-nan, Ho-nan, and Shan-si. The last is
eminently the coal and iron province of China, and its coal-field, as
described by Baron Richthofen, combines, in an extraordinary manner, all
the advantages that can enhance the value of such a field except (at
present) that of facile export; whilst the quantity available is so great
that from Southern Shan-si alone he estimates the whole world could be
supplied, at the present rate of consumption, for several thousand years.
"Adits, miles in length, could be driven within the body of the coal....
These extraordinary conditions ... will eventually give rise to some
curious features in mining... if a railroad should ever be built from the
plain to this region ... branches of it will be constructed within the
body of one or other of these beds of anthracite." Baron Richthofen, in
the paper which we quote from, indicates the revolution in the deposit of
the world's wealth and power, to which such facts, combined with other
characteristics of China, point as probable; a revolution so vast that its
contemplation seems like that of a planetary catastrophe.
In the coal-fields of Hu-nan "the mines are chiefly opened where the
rivers intersect the inclined strata of the coal-measures and allow the
coal-beds to be attacked by the miner immediately at their out-croppings."
At the highest point of the Great Kiang, reached by Sarel and Blakiston,
they found mines on the cliffs over the river, from which the coal was
sent down by long bamboo cables, the loaded baskets drawing up the empty
ones.
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