A knowledge of places and things modifies our thoughts, influences our lives, and gives a better direction to our work. True information changes the mental status by widening the scope of vision, The scenery at Chinkiang is grand but its interest and beauty ure doubly enhanced by the pictures which imagination has painted on the great river and surrounding hills in consequence of the possession of historical facts. Walking over the hills, one occasionally turns up an English bullet. Instantly "the thought reverts to Canton, Commissioner Lin, Captain Elliot and the Opium War; of two great nations mutually ignorant, but equally proud, and to a host of other events and men (dust long ago) which the little pellet of lend has conjured up. The bullet doubtless had its living billet, for the English shot at the heart in the Battle of Chinkiang and they were excellent marksmen. During this reverie one quite forgives the urchin who has been calling "foreign devil" on the other side of the valley, for the idea flashes across one's mind that possibly that same urchin is telling the truth if the allusion is made to the man who fired that bullet into the life centre of an immortal being a generation ago.
Yet the proverbial fool would discover nothing extraordinary in this opium pill; neither would he in the field at, Waterloo, nor in the Tower of London, because he is ignorant of the history that lies behind such and renders them the objects of interest that they are. To the uneducated the British fg might appear a senseless device, a mere rag with some figures woven in—but, Oh what story of patriotism, blood, fire, and sword those emblems express On my way to China sixteen years ago one of theship'speople asked me why Iwas going there? He was told. His response was that he didn't believe "that old Jew book." He had doubts too, he said, that such a man as Luther ever existed and did not quite believe the Reformation, because be had "been over there" himself and saw nothing of these things This gentleman evidently thought he would meet Luther on the street, hear papal bulls bellowing in the fields, or behold shaven-headed monks pasting up theses on the church doors. In the absence of these, he'concluded there had probably been no Reformation. Likewise many tenther-headed planet-circlers in these days lightly give their valuable testimony against mission work. Expecting to see idol bonfires, moles and bats, temple destruction and myriads of wholly sanctified Chinese, they are staggered at something else—possibly a Scotch and spiritual something sold cheap in Shanghai—and decry missions and especially missionaries.
An acquaintance with reliable, historical knowledge differentiates us from the Chinese and forms an almost impassable barrier betwixt us. At the same time we confess with shame that we know too little of Chinese history. Chinese chroniclers were so much hampered by the pernicious doctrine of metempsychosis—and what incentive can there be-in writing anything for posterity when posterity may. be at this moment noisily existent in a goat oradonkey1—that we cannot seriously blame them for their meagre allusions or contemptuous silence in regard to mo-montons occurrences. There is so much chaff and so little wheat, or as the Americans would say, "too much sugar for a cent," that a lazy man does doubt the utility of sifting and winnowing and picking the heterogeneous mass.
"Ven you're married man, Samivel said old Weller, " you'll understand a good many things as you don't understand now; but yether its worth while gain' through so much to learn so little, as the charity boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter taste. J rather think it issu'
There is just as much lying in Chinese history as there is in any other. In the former it is more apparent, for there the facts ave hopelessly mixed with superstition and no scourge of destructive criticism has Iashed out the anachroisms and inaccuracies. The events recorded in this Short History may be relied upon as tolerably certain, They are the resultant of the winnowing and picking just referred to—ground and prepared to suit the palate and digestion of the English. The admixture of certain somnorific dates was necessary to render the matter cohesive, so we warn all literary dyspeptics against proceeding farther. Indigestible sweetmeats produce Carlyliau atrabiliousness, melancholia, or in Saxon, black bile, The student of Chinese soon finds on that the words JAF fu and BE kien, which we translate respectively, prefect and magistrate, mean also prefecture and magistracy. The former term conveys the idea ofa palace. Jif f FEQKRE Where is your honourable palace 1" or in brusque English, "Where do you ye 2" is an expression we use every day in addressing the polite Chinese.
China was divided into prefectures in the ninth century, when Alfred the Great after sulidaing the Danes, divided England into counties and founded the University of Oxford. The prefect of Chinkiang is ruler of the four magi tracies of Tant'n, Tanyang, Chiut'an, and Liyang. Chinkiang city is located in the first of these and to this magistracy we will confine this History. Tant'ubien is bounded on the north by the rolling, treacherous Yangtze. This river carries so much mud in solution and deposits such quantities of it into the Pacific Ovean that it colours that body of brine for fifteen miles out. From time immemorial the Chinese have called that part of the ocean Huangbai or the Yellow Sea, This district is the most northerly of the Kiangnan river biens. It extends about sixteen miles south to the Tapyang and Chint'mn districts, and is bounded on the east by the Ch'angehou prefecture and on the west by Kiangning or Nanking. The name Tant'n was given to the district about 200 B.C. when Ch'in Shih, Huang was on the throne. As this Prince is connected with the name, it is relevant to the subject to give some account of him.
From the fact that he subdued all the neighbouring States he has been called the Napoleon of China by modern historians. After becoming ruler of the whole country, he made progresses through his domains, built public edifices, made roads, canals, ete, and sought in every way to facilitate trade between his 36 provinces. To keep out the Huns, he built the Great Wall, completing it in ten yenrs. But his name is detested by the Chinese for the following reason. When the reins of the empire were firmly in his hand -he was told by one of the great scholars that "a state of things not modelled from the lessons of antiquity would not long continue." This remark being laid before the Ministers one of them arose and denounced the scholar so pungently that the Emperor decreed that these records of antiquity should be destroyed and "that those who made mention of the past so as to blame the present should be put to death, along with their relatives." So the books were burned and 460 scholars who had violated the prohibition were buried alive in pits. One might almost wish that this Emperor had waited about two thousand years to be bora not for the purpose of interring alive some of the antiquity-loving neo-phobists of to-day, but simply to frighten them. Then, too, there is excellent material for bonfires in Chinese libraries, Ch'in would have been just the man to put the Germans out of Shantung, for no sedan-sitting, opium-smoking, long-finger-nailed, obese, inactive progress-barring mandarin was he. However, he was superstitious and constantly on the watch as all usurpers are lest some one should dethrone him. A certain hill said to exist just beyond the present East gate of Chinkiang was so pregnant with "Imperial Influence" that whoever had the good fortune to bury a relative this favourable spot or be buried there himself would have a son occupy the Imperial Throne. Ch'in heard of it and ordered his exiled convicts to destroy its influence by cutting a ditch about it, Because these culprits wore red clothes they were called Tant'u or "Red Exiles" and from these the name of FHBERK is derived.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.