Poppy is not grown in the valley to the same extent as hitherto, because poppy displaces wheat and beans, and the people have need of all the land they can spare to grow breadstuffs.

In the other half of the year, rice, maize, and tobacco are grown together on the plain, and at the same season potatoes, oats, and buckwheat are grown in the hills.
Part of the plain is permanently under water, but it was the drought in the winter and the rains in the summer of successive years that caused the famine.

There are no Mohammedans in the town--there have been none since the rebellion--but there are many small Mohammedan villages across the hills.

No district in China is now more peaceful than the Valley of Tongchuan.

The Yangtse River--"The River of Golden Sand"-- is only two days distant, but it is not navigable even by Chinese boatmen.