Sugarcane grows in the Yangtse Valley in little pockets, and it is from there that the compressed cakes of brown sugar seen in all the markets of Western Yunnan are brought.

Coal comes from a mine two or three days inland; white-wax trees provide an important industry; the hills to the west contain the most celebrated copper mines in the empire.
The cash of Tongchuan are very small and inferior, 2000 being equivalent to one tael, whereas in Chaotong, 110 miles away, the cash vary from 1260 to 1640 the tael.

Before the present Prefect took office the cash were more debased still, no less than 4000 being then counted as one tael, but the Prefect caused all these cash to be withdrawn from circulation.
Unlike Chaotong, no children are permitted to be sold in the city, but during last year no less than 3000 children (the figures are again Chinese) were carried through the town on their way from Chaotong to the capital.

The edict of the Prefect which forbids the selling of children increases the cases of infanticide, and in time of famine there are few mothers among the starving poor who can truthfully assert that they have never abandoned any of their offspring.
The subject of infanticide in China has been discussed by a legion of writers and observers; and the opinion they come to seems to be generally that the prevalence of the crime, except in seasons of famine, has been enormously overstated.

The prevalent idea with us Westerns appears to be, that the murder of their children, especially of their female children, is a kind of national pastime with the Chinese, or, at the best, a national peculiarity.