XVI.
MANCHURIA AND KOREA.
The 39th parallel of latitude lies just south of Tientsin;
followed westward, it crosses the toe of Italy's boot, leads
past Lisbon in Portugal, near Washington and St. Louis
and to the north of Sacramento on the Pacific. We were
leaving a country with a mean July temperature of 80° F.,
and of 21° in January, but where two feet of ice may form;
a country where the eighteen year mean maximum
temperature is 103.5° and the mean minimum 4.5°; where
twice in this period the thermometer recorded 113° above
zero, and twice 7° below, and yet near the coast and in
the latitude of Washington; a country where the mean
annual rainfall is 19.72 inches and all but 3.37 inches falls
in June, July, August and September. We had taken
the 5:40 A. M. Imperial North-China train, June 17th,
to go as far northward as Chicago,—to Mukden in
Manchuria, a distance by rail of some four hundred miles, but
all of the way still across the northward extension of the
great Chinese coastal plain. Southward, out from the
coldest quarter of the globe, where the mean January
temperature is more than 40° below zero, sweep northerly
winds which bring to Mukden a mean January temperature
only 3° above zero, and yet there the July temperature
averages as high as 77° and there is a mean annual
rainfall of but 18.5 inches, coming mostly in the summer,
as at Tientsin.
Although the rainfall of the northern extension of China's coastal plain is small, its efficiency is relatively
