as all who know anything about the Chinese
are aware. In an article, on the population of the Chinese Empire, in
the Chinese Repository for 1833, the following
is one of the arguments adduced for
believing the population of the entire empire
to be (in round figures) 333,000,000:—In
the eighteen provinces there are 1,518
of the smaller divisions—heën, chow, and
sing,—each of which, were the population
equally divided, would have about 237,000.
Nanhae and Pwanyu, which includes the
cities of Canton and Fatshan and also the
village of Whampoa have on the lowest
estimate more than twice the given number;
Singan would probably fall below the
average number. Heängshán heën might
be assumed as a standard. Judging by
what we have seen of Heängshán, we are
inclined to believe that it contains more
than 237,000 inhabitants.
[1] This estimate
of the population of the Höng Shán District
would appear to err largely on the side
of moderation, Macao alone, as we have
seen, having a Chinese population of over
60,000. In fact this estimate of 237,000
or more would seem scarcely to provide
sufficient people to populate one of the towns
in Höng Shán, Síú Lám—though to be sure
it is the largest in the district and its inhabitants
do not speak the Höng Shan dialect—to
say nothing of all the other numerous
towns and villages with their teeming populations,
and Macao too would be left out of
the calculation. Of Höng Shán, Dr. Henry
says:—Beyond this we enter the district of
Höng Shán, which stretches down to the sea,
and has many large towns and important
centres of trade and influence. Its principal
town is Síú Lám, with a population variously
reckoned at three hundred thousand
and upward.
[2]
To try again to form some rough estimate
of the population of the Höng Shán district.:
with a population say of 360,000,000 the
average for the whole empire is 268 persons
to the square mile, while the average in the
nine southern and western provinces is only
154 to the square mile; now there were 289
inhabitants to the square mile in Great
Britain in 1881 (being a greater number to
the square mile than in some of the principal
countries in Europe). Keeping the above in
one's memory, let the following extract be
read:—Few spots in the world maintain a
denser population than the delta of the Pearl
River [the Canton River] … Its density
of population doubtless is greater than any
other equal area in the whole province; for
if the whole contained as many, the entire
amount could hardly be less than thirty
millions instead of nineteen millions as now
reckoned.
[3] Now with the computed population
of 19,200,000 to the whole of the
Kwong Tung Province, there would only be
245 inhabitants to the square mile; were
the population 30,000,000, it would be 389
to the squre mile: in one case far below,
and in the other far above, that of Great
Britain. The area of the whole province is
stated to be 78,250 miles. Kwong Chau
Fu, with its fourteen districts contains a
ninth of the area of the whole province.
If it were all equally thickly populated as
the delta of the Canton River which delta,
the writer, already quoted, considers as
roughly coinciding with the Kwong Chau
Prefecture—then, supposing the population
to be not less than say, 30,000,000, it would
give us an average of 383 inhabitants per
square mile, a total of 3,372,315 for the
whole prefecture, and 240,879 for each of
the fourteen districts of which Höng Shán
is one. This calculation brings us to about
the same conclusion as the writer in the
Chinese Repository with his more than
237,000. But even by this process, of
calculation, if the large town of Síú Lám has
at least 300,000 inhabitants and the district
city Shek Kéí, four or five miles of Macao,
- ↑ 'Chinese Repository,' Vol. I, p. 395.
- ↑ The Cross and the Dragon, p. 35.
- ↑ 'Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,' Part V, p. 1855.
