Norwirastanpaxa the sneering remark by the Pall Mall Gazette that a recent article in the Quarterly Peview, founded in great measure on.the reports of the Baron von Richthofen, contained little that was not known before with regard to China, we as residents in that country for many years, and possessed of a good deal more intimate experience of its ways than the writer or writers in our contemporary, are quite willing to believe that the Baron has thrown much light on the condition of.the Empire, socially and politically as well as geographically and. geologically. We had a vague sort of intuition that North differed from South, and East from West, in the character of their productions and the condition of their people, but it is only of late years that we commenced to see wherein this difference really. consists, and no. one has hitherto illuminated us to the same that of the remaining five he. has, from nearer sources than are generally available, been able to collect 'a: considerable stock of information.. Were the Baron then merely an ordinary traveller, his statements, founded on so large.an experience, would. have. been entitled to careful consideration. The Baron, however, it may be fairly said, is not.an ordinary traveller, but possesses in an eminent degree the power of observation and of concentration, and it is this peculiar phase of his character which will always lend value to: the reports which he has addressed to the Chamber of Commerce. The last published, being the result of a journey through Pechihli, Shansi, Shensi- and Szechuen, is in those respects in no measure behind the preceding, while it opens up tous a country of the present condition of which we were almost ina state of darkness. The difficulties of communication, the consequent fluctuations.of the population at one time, as in. Szechuen pressing on the' means of gubb sistence, to be again, as in Shensi, almost obliterated off the face of the earth, the oppressions exercised by the military class, and the neglect of the rich mineral productions of the earth; these form again the under current of the report. They are too palpable to be passed over even by ano} observer, and in them lies one of the strangest phases of human life.. Three of those waves of human increase and subsequent, obliteration are spoken of by the Baron as having passed over Szechuen. The great welder of the Chinese Empire, Tsin-shi Hwangti, first settled a portion of the province with Chinese, driving out before them'the aboriginal Mantsze, and the Chinese population increased gradually till the time of the invasion of Kublai Khan.
Then, however, it was almost exterminated. Emigration from other.provinces was set on foot, and by the close of the Ming dynasty Szechuen was however, came with the arrival of the Manchus, and Szechuen was again devastated, to be again resettled mainly from Shensi and Hupeh, but.in smaller proportions from other provinces, even as far off-as Kwangtung and Fuhkien. The fact that the Chinese' race and language is preserved in all its. purity in Szechuen, isolated though it-be. from the rest of the Empire, and adjoining regions where for centuries Chinese and aborigines have lived cheek by jowl, thus strangely accounted for. What Szechuen has undergone in historic times has happened within the last five years to the neighbouring, province of Shensi. Millions of the inhabitants were slaughtered by the Mahomme. dans, whose main object: seems to have been to utterly exterminate the: pagan
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.