204  the  CHINESE  EMPIRE
the  seventh  and  eighth  hours  of  Zone  time  east  of  Greenwich.
The  western  part  is  mountainous,  filled  with  the  spurs  of  the
Central  Asian  plateau  ;  while  on  the  east  are  the  great
plains  formed  by  the  outfall  of  the  Yellow  River  and  the
Yangtze  ;  and  in  the  south  is  the  small,  but  incredibly  rich,
plain  of  the  Pearl  (or  West  River)  delta,  lying  around
Canton.  Of  the  nineteen  provinces  (treating  Manchuria  as
an  undivided  area),  treaty  ports  have  been  opened  in  fourteen—coast, ­
  riverine,  and  frontier—while  five  (Shansi,  Shensi,
Kansu,  Honan,  and  Kweichow)  find  their  outlet  through
extra-provincial  ports.

Treaty  Ports
treaty  port  is  almost  synonymous  with  “  port  of  entiy,
but  it  is  something  more.  The  first  men  of  the  West,
Portuguese,  Dutch,  English,  or  American,  to  come  to  China
conducted  their  trade  mainly  at  Canton.  The  Portuguese
in  their  enterprising  days  had  traded  at  Ningpo  and  Foochow
as  well,  but  under  such  circumstances  that  in  i557  they
obtained  a  lease  of  Macao,  88  miles  from  Canton,  and  there
they  settled—and  stagnated.  In  the  eighteenth  century
the  traders  of  that  day,  the  English  and  Dutch,  visited  both
Canton  and  Macao  ;  but  the  traders  of  the  early  part  of
the  nineteenth  century,  the  English  and  Americans,  made
Canton  their  commercial  centre.  Here,  cooped  up  in  their
factory,  or  trading  post,  they  had  the  privilege  of  residing,
and  here  they  bought  and  sold—much  of  the  former  and  little
of  the  latter.  The  conditions,  both  of  residence  and  of
trade,  were  unsatisfactory,  and  the  British  Treaty  of  Nanking
  (1842)  opened  the  first  “  treaty  ports,”  five  in  number  :
Canton,  Amoy,  Foochow,  Ningpo,  and  Shanghai.  These  five
ports  have  now  grown  to  forty,  including  some  that  have
been  opened  voluntarily  by  China,  not  under  the  obligation
of  any  treaty,  but  on  the  same  footing  and  under  the  same
trade  regulations  as  the  regular  treaty  ports.  At  these
ports  foreign  nations  are  privileged  to  establish  Consulates,
foreign  merchants  are  permitted  to  live  and  trade,  and  on
the  trade  at  these  ports  are  levied  dues  and  duties  according