THE  PROVINCES  AND  THE  TREATY  PORTS  265
principal  export,  other  than  opium,  was  American  kerosene
oil  which  had  come  up  the  river  from  Canton.
NANNING  (22°  48'  N.,  108°  15'  E.),  a  city  of  about
100,000  inhabitants,  situated  about  30  miles  below  the
junction  of  the  Right  and  Left  Branches  of  the  mam  (southern)
stream  of  the  West  River,  is  the  commercial  centre  for
south-western  Kwangsi,  and  a  forwarding  depot  foi  the
West  River  route  to  Yunnan.  That  portion  of  the  Yunnan
and  Kwangsi  traffic  which  passes  through  Pakhoi  converges ­
  on  this  point.  The  opening  of  Nanning  to  foreign
trade  has  been  under  consideration  for  some  time,  and  it
was  opened  voluntarily  by  China,  as  a  trade  mart  ”  on
January  1,  1907.  The  Municipal  Government  will,  it  is
announced,  be  of  the  type  adopted  at  Y  ocho  w.
Yunnan
Yunnan,  “  South  of  the  Clouds,”  is  an  elevated  plateau
of  bright  sunshine,  lying  south  of  cloud-covered  and  foggy
Szechwan.  It  was  the  last  of  the  Eighteen  Provinces  to
be  assimiliated  by  the  Empire,  its  direct  government  by
China  dating  only  from  the  time  of  Kublai  Khan  (a.d.  1260),
through  whose  conquest  Yunnan  was  annexed  and  his
suzerainty  over  Burma,  Annam,  and  Cambodia  reaffirmed.
The  area  is  put  at  about  145,000  square  miles,  and  the
estimates  of  the  population  range  from  6,000,000  (Popoff,
1894)  to  10,000,000  (Tiberii,  1902).  The  Panthay  rebellion
in  1867,  occasioned  by  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  the
Mohammedan  population  to  set  up  a  government  of  their
own,  was  suppressed  with  great  difficulty  and  with  ruthless
slaughter  ;  and  this  brought  in  its  train  the  bubonic  plague,
which  was  for  many  years  endemic  in  Yunnan  (at  Mengtsz
with  a  resident  population  of  12,000  nearly  1,000  deaths
are  said  to  have  occurred  in  each  of  the  years  1892  to  1896),
was  first  seen  by  European  surgeons  at  Pakhoi  in  1882,
and  reached  Hongkong  and  the  outer  world  in  1894-  These
causes  for  a  reduction  in  the  population,  combined  with
the  ungrateful  nature  of  the  soil,  would  lead  to  the  acceptance ­
  of  the  lower  figure.  Yunnan  is  decidedly  mountainous.