of raw materials for clothing, may impart an extra demand for Chinese silks, while it cheapens the opening market for American cotton.

The area of China is computed at 5,000,000 square miles, and the population 420,000,000. The Empire is divided into three parts for administration purposes, China Proper, Manchuina, and the Colonial Possessions. Central China, the flowery land and home of agriculture in that country, embraces near 2,000,000 square miles, one-third of which is classed with the best tillage lands of the world.

The Chinese are alive to the benefits of river steamers, and to the advantages which shipments on European vessels give in safety and certainty of insurance. The internal trade of China, aided by the unusual facilities derived from its water communication, ramifies over all the provinces, and is of inconsiderable magnitude. Junks, barges, and whole fleets of smaller boats cover its canals and rivers, the tonnage of which is said not to be exaggerated in equalling it with the combined tonnage of all other nations! The coasting trade is comparative small, and is much impeded, not only in dangers of navigation along a coast frequently visited by storms of terrific violence, but by bands of pirates, who roam about almost with impunity, and make an easy prey of defenceless traders. The Chinese merchant calculates to lose one venture in three. He now avoids the risk by freighting in foreign bottoms, and this throws a large amount of trade into American hands, other than the direct trade between the two countries. It is evident that with the opening facilities for intercourse, that the American river steamboats penetrating into the vast network of rivers, which command the production of so many millions of industrious persons, have an immense future before them. A considerable number of steamboats has already been sent out to China in the course of the last few years from New York, Boston, and San Francisco, and so far as heard from, with extremely profitable results. A number more are now being fitted out for the same adventure, one or two at New York, but particularly at San Francisco, and it is thought that a large number could follow them with abundant profit to their owners. The extent of country drained by the Chinese rivers thrown open to trade, as well as the disposition of the Chinese to hand over their transport trade to foreigners, opens out an amount of employment for steamers which in the distant future may far exceed that afforded this class of vessels in the Mississippi valley.

In one of the last China papers it is stated that on the Yang-tse-Kiang there were twenty-four steamers, of which nineteen were English and five American. A San Francisco paper learns that six are building in England specially for that trade, and that some disposition exists on the part of the English government to avail itself of the call for steamers in the China market to dispose of some old gunboats. There are also steamers building in England for a line between Shanghae and the ports of Japan..

It is computed that during the rebellion epidemic, now prevailing in China, one million of junks and boats have been destroyed, most of which were on the rivers and canals which feed the great basin of the Yang-tseKiang. The operation of steamboats is, it is well known, to shorten the time of transportation, and, by so doing, to virtually double the capital and stimulate the productions of all regions. What may not, therefore, be expected from their influence upon the million of boats in the great and rich basin, to which a foreign demand for its commodities is just imparting new life.

PROGRESS OF POPULATION IN MINNESOTA.

BY J. A. WHEELOCK.

By the territorial census of 1849, the population of the Territory of Minnesota, embracing what is now Dakota, was 4,780. Of this number, the returns show 723 for settlements now outside of the State, leaving the population of the State as now bounded, 4,057. The United States census of Minnesota Territory for 1850, showed a population of 6,077. Subtracting therefrom the number given the previous year for Dakota, not otherwise ascertainable, the result for the State, as now bounded, would be 5,354.

The following table, then, exhibits the growth of population in Minnesota for ten years, within the limits of the present State:

The following table exhibits the increase of the vote at the general elections for Territorial and State officers, and taking into account the degree of excitement and other circumstances attending each election, is valuable as showing the ratio of votes to population, and affording a basis for future calculations:

The table of population shows a ratio of increase of 56 per cent yearly, from 1849 to 1857, and of less than 5 per cent yearly, from 1857 to 1860. The table of votes shows an increase of 60 per cent yearly, from 1851 to 1857; of 112 per cent yearly, from 1855 to 1857, and a slight decrease from 1857 to 1860.

The swell and subsidence of the wave of population at the different periods above indicated, mark three well defined phases in the progress of the population of our State.

1. In the years immediately following 1850, the gold discoveries of California diverted immigration from the northwest, and moreover, until 1853 and 1854, the whole of that portion of Minnesota, west of the Mississippi River, was in the occupancy of the Sioux Indians. For these reasons population did not set rapidly towards Minnesota in 1854.

2. Accordingly, the table of votes shows that it was between 1854 and 1857 that the chief immigration to Minnesota took place. Over 100,000

were added to the population of Minnesota between the fall of 1855 and 1857, nearly trebling in two years. This extraordinary influx of population, with its accompanying exaggeration of property values, and wild riot of financial adventure, constitute this period one of the most remarkable in the history of the age, and is not likely to be repeated in the experience of our State.

3. The effect upon immigration of the violent reaction which followed, is shown in the halting pace of population between 1857 and 1860, when the increase was only 22,000 in number, or about 7,000 yearly, of which over 6,600 yearly, or about 19,828 for the three years, were the natural increase by birth, reducing the immigration for the period to about 2,000.

The census was taken at a period when the country was just recovering from the exhausting financial calamities of 1857. In the overflowing harvests of that year a new climacteric of recuperated commercial life was reached a new period of healthy and vigorous growth was entered on, and now, notwithstanding the gloom of civil war which overhangs the nation, emigration has been pouring in with a new impulse. The following table shows the absolute yearly and relative increase in the several periods above noted:

INCREASE COMPARED WITH OTHER STATES.

The increase of population in Minnesota in the first decade of its settlement, has been far geater relatively than that of any other State of the Union, in the corresponding period of growth.

A tabular comparison would occupy too much space, but it will suffice to say that of the Western States starting about the year 1800 or 1810, with about the same population as that of Minnesota in 1850-Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois-were each from 20 to 28 years in reaching the population attained by Wisconsin or Iowa in about 15, and by Minnesota, in 10 years. This fact strikingly illustrates the influence of improved modes of communication in promoting emigration to the West.

The following table will show the movement of population in eight States of the northwest in the last decade, as compared with Minnesota :

The increase in all the free States was 5,450,916, so that the increase in the northwestern States was 58 per cent, or nearly three-fifths of the whole free growth. Minnesota contributed about five per cent, or onetwentieth of the northwestern increase, about three per cent, or onethirty-third of the whole free growth, and about two per cent of the entire national gain.

The whole northwest gained in the ratio of 67 per cent over 1850. Minnesota gained 31 fold or 3,127 per cent.

Minnesota has thus grown in the last ten years more than twelve times as rapidly as any of the northwestern States, and nearly fifty times as rapidly as the average growth of all of them.

This is not, however, a fair comparison, as the geometrical ratios of increase are of course greater in the first stages of growth. It will be a better illustration to say that Minnesota shows a more rapid growth in the last ten years, than the most rapidly growing States in the period of their most rapid growth, as the following comparison will show:

Minnesota, by this showing, has grown 3 times as fast in the last ten years as the most rapidly growing State of the Union, in the most rapid period of its growth; six times as fast as the average of the fastest States, and one hundred times as fast as the average increase of the whole Union.

COMPARATIVE INCREASE BY BIRTH AND IMMIGRATION.

It is interesting to trace the respective shares which the collateral agencies of birth and immigration have contributed to our population. The representative population of the State, as it stood on June 1st, 1860, was derived from the following general sources:

Number of persons born in Minnesota.....

32,246

Number of persons born out of the State, but in
the United States....

.....

81,489

Increment of Births.-The number of persons born in Minnesota, then,

is nearly one-fifth, or 18.8 per cent of our whole population.

Of this number there were born before the census of 1850...
Born in the ten years ending June 1, 1860....

1,334 30,912

The births in the last decade being 18.5 per cent of the whole increase of the decade.

The bearings of this fact will not be fully appreciated without recollecting that five-sevenths of our population have been acquired since

1855, that is in the last half of the decade. From the vote and partial census of 1855, I have the means of estimating the population of that year at about 50,000, leaving 122,022 as the increase of five succeeding years. During the semi-decade ending with 1855, the deficiency of females was notoriously much greater than since then; so much so, indeed, as to have been felt as a serious social inconvenience.

The aggravated operation of this cause in California in 1850, reduced the annual proportion of births to 0.29 per cent or less than three to every one thousand of the population. The average annual ratio for the United States, is 2.75 per cent. In Minnesota, for the first half of the last census decade, the annual ratio could not have exceeded 2.5 per cent, except in 1850, when the half-breed and Indian women of the country replenished the easy domestic circles of our trading and trapping population in a ratio of 2.77 per cent.

Applying a ratio of 2.5 per cent to the progressive scale of population for the period, as estimated from the current vote, we have the following as the increment of births:

2,875

Total number of births for the period.......

During the five remaining years of the decade, the births were therefore 28,037, which, assuming a cumulative increase in the annual ratio of births, as society matured, and as the disparity between the sexes decreased, were probably distributed upon the ascending series of the scale of population, nearly as follows:

Population.

Ratio per cent No. of

1856.....

1857.

1858.

1859.

1860..

of births.

births.

28,037

Total number of births for the period.........

REMARKABLE FECUNDITY OF OUR POPULATION.

This table, whose correctness in the main cannot be disputed, shows a degree of local fecundity, if the numerical ratios of births can be so called, as unparalleled, so far as I know, in the recorded statistics of population, as has been the rapid concentration of the social elements necessary to produce the result.

This will better appear by comparison with the most prolific States of the Union in 1850. In Minnesota, the ratio of births per cent of population in 1860, was about 4.15 per cent. In Wisconsin, in 1850, it was 3.41; in Iowa, 3.17; in Indiana, 3.27; in Missouri, 3.30; and in polygamous Utah, 3.80, while the average of all the States was 2.75. Minnesota is therefore more than 50 per cent more prolific than the average of the Union, and more than twice as productive as New Hampshire and Vermont.