harbour of Possiet Bay which we visited in
1886. But, on the south, there are several
hundred miles of coastline on which are situated the Treaty Port of Newchwang, the great naval base, Port Arthur, and the valuable harbour of Talien-wan Bay ; the two latter of which are open all the year round. Manchuria cannot, therefore, be called inaccessible. Foreign goods can readily reach its doors, the country products can be as easily exported, while immigration from the over-crowded districts of China Proper flows naturally to it. Its great navigable rivers render access to the interior still more easy. The great Amur and its tributaries, the Sungari and the Ussuri, are navigable for hundreds of miles, and steam launches have penetrated so far into the interior as Kirin. In the south, the Yalu and the Liao rivers are both navigable for some distance from their mouth, and are most valuable for the means they offer of floating rafts of timber down them to the coast.
The hilly character of so great a portion of the country is somewhat of a drawback to development, for the distant mountain glens afford asylums for lawless brigands, and over a succes-
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