TONGKING has an area of 46,000 square miles. In the east are the delta lands of the Song-Koi, and on them the majority of the 6,000,000 inhabitants of the country are settled. In the north the land is hilly, and in the west it is mountainous. Rice, which is the most important product, is grown both in the lowlands and in the valleys of the uplands, and two crops a year are generally harvested, though, owing to the large population, the amount avail able for export is small. Maize has only been recently introduced into the country but, as is also the case in Cochin-China, its cultiva tion is rapidly extending. Cotton is grown and considerable atten tion is paid to sericulture. Other products include coffee, some varieties of rubber, and cunao, a plant from which a much used native dye is obtained. Coal is at present the most important mineral obtained in Tongking, and is worked mainly in the peninsula of Hongay, north of Haiphong, where there are open mines. The coal, which is anthracitic, is used for various purposes, and large quantities of briquettes are also manufactured. Tin, zinc, and a few other minerals, are worked on a small scale. Tongking is the chief industrial region in Indo-China. Several mills for spinning cotton yarn have been established, and there are also distilleries, soap works, and factories for the production of paper, tobacco, matches, cement, and other articles. The most important towns are Hanoi, the capital, which is situated upon the right bank of the Song-Koi, sixty miles from the coast, and Haiphong, the leading port of the country, at the mouth of the Cua-cam, a canalised off-shoot of the same river.
CommuNicAnoNs.—Communications in Indo-China frequently present considerable difficulties. In Cambodia and in Cochin China the obvious means of penetration into the interior is by way of the Mekong, but that river, although it is navigable by specially constructed steamers for several hundred miles, is obstructed by rapids at several parts of its course, and has never become the great route into the interior which the French hoped to make it.
The principal railway in the south runs from Mytho on a distributary of the Mekong, by way of Saigon, to Phantiet on the Annamese coast, and it is proposed to connect Phantiet with Turan, whence a line 108 miles in length runs to Quangtri. Quangtri may some day be linked up with Vinh, which already has railway com munication with Hanoi, 200 miles distant. In Tongking a line runs from Haiphong to Hanoi, whence one branch goes by Laokai to Yunnan-fu and the other by Langson to the frontier of Kwangsi. The branch from Hanoi to Yunnanfu has been constructed to develop French trade with China, and a reduced tariff exists for goods which are of French or Indo-Chinese origin. In the internal trade of Tongking the Song-Koi and its tributaries play an important part.
COMMERCE.—Rice is the most important of the exports of Indo China and accounts for nearly two-thirds of the total value of the goods of domestic origin sent out of the country. Fish, maize, and cotton yarn are also exported in considerable quantities. Among the imports cotton goods come first, while a great variety of articles, including silk, liquor, paper, oil, iron and steel goods, and opium are all bought to a greater or less extent. The export trade is conducted very largely with Singapore and Hong-Kong, while the bulk of the imports is of French or Eastern origin.