Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/25

put at 150 millions in 1743 is now believed by the best authorities to be over 400 millions.

These eighteen provinces have always been regarded as China proper. But the Empire includes also Manchuria, and has for colonial possessions Thibet, Mongolia, and Ili, in which last are included Eastern Turkestan and Sungaria (or Jungaria). If perplexity exists as to the exact area of the eighteen provinces and the number of their inhabitants, it will easily be understood that still vaguer approximations are alone possible in the case of the remote and little visited regions of Manchuria (known as the "Three Eastern Provinces") and the above colonial territories. Manchuria is believed to cover 364,000 square miles approximately, and to have a population of about thirteen millions, while the corresponding figures for the colonies are:

Taking these figures for superficies, and assuming the area of the eighteen provinces to be one and one third million square miles, which is probably a close approximation, it would follow that the total expanse of the Chinese Empire is about four and one fourth million square miles and that its population approximates to 450 millions. Thus it stands third on the territorial schedule of the world's states, Russia being first and Great