Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/56

quently chosen as places of banishment. The justice of this view is attested by the comparatively scant population of Kwangsi and Yunnan 112 and 60 to the square mile, respectively - but Kwangtung with its thirty millions of inhabitants-376 to the square mile-scarcely belongs to the same category.

It will be observed by looking at a map of China that there lies along the whole coast from south to north a chain of islands, the nearest link being Formosa, between which and the province of Fuhkien the distance is only some twenty miles. The well-known "Black Current" (Kuro-shiwo) being on the outside of these islands, they serve as a barrier against its warm waters, and in that fact is to be found a reason for the cold along the Chinese coast as compared with the shores of the Atlantic, a difference corresponding to nearly eight degrees of latitude. To the same cause may also be attributed the comparatively scant rainfall in the maritime provinces of China, the evaporation from the cold water being proportionately small. Thus in Hongkong, one of the chain of islands, the annual mean rainfall for twenty-one years was over eighty-six inches-as much as thirty inches sometimes falls in twenty-four hours, and in 1901 the total for the twelve months was 117 inches, whereas at Canton the average is twenty inches, in Shanghai it does not exceed forty inches, and in the province of Chili it appears to be only sixteen inches. Further