Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/512

 504 to find a Newton than a Shakspere amongst such a people. The only development of the Chinese mind with which we are as yet acquainted is in the direction of agriculture and commerce. They are keen enough in these pursuits—as merchants, especially, they are distinguished for good faith in their operations. It must be remembered, too, that of the Chinese we have as yet seen little more than the jealousy of the government has permitted us to see—and that is not much. All we know is that when the governing clique at Pekin have permitted Europeans to knock at the doors of the Chinese husbandmen for any commodity within the limits of their productive powers the demand has been duly honoured. Take, for example, the article of silk. In the year 1844 not a bale was sent home. Stocks failed in Europe, and orders were at once sent out to China for supplies. The opening of the ports was in 1842. Now, in 1845, there were sent home 10,727 bales; in 1855, 50,489 bales; in 1856, double that quantity; in 1857, double that quantity again, so that in that year Mr. Cooke, who was at Shanghai, records that if the Chinamen succeeded in establishing their prices, and in disposing of their stocks, they would take 10,000,000l. for silk at that port alone. We have not the latest returns for teas at hand, but we find that for the years 1856—571856-57 [sic] there was exported from China to England and her colonies 87,741,000 lbs. of tea.

Surely these calculations, referring only to two articles—no doubt, staples—give one an enormous idea of the industry, ingenuity, and perseverance of this remarkable people, with whom, as it should seem, we are about to come into far closer contact than heretofore. As it is a great thing in approaching a new subject to understand the length and breadth of it, and not to lose oneself in vague and shadowy conjectures, we would add that any one who turns his attention to China would do well to establish before his own mind a correct notion of what China really is. A few years back we were in the habit of crediting Russia with all her steppes and frozen deserts, not considering that the wretched nomad tribes who manage to pick up a precarious subsistence in the wilderness do not add to the strength or power of a nation. Since the Crimean war we have learnt to consider Russia from a more rational point of view. We know that the compact provinces which lie together, and abut upon Germany and the Baltic on their eastern and northern sides, constitute the real force of the empire, and that the Siberian deserts, even up to the Frozen Sea, count for nothing. Just so with regard to China. Eighteen provinces lying together, and covering as much ground as would be covered by seven Frances, are the only China with which we are concerned.

Thibet and Chinese Tartary, and their “deserts idle,” may be removed from view altogether. Mr. Cooke, after a most careful investigation of this matter upon the spot, sets the population of these eighteen provinces at 360,279,897. He adds “if England and Wales were as large as China, England and Wales would contain within one-ninth of the same amount of population. If Lombardy were as large as China, Lombardy would contain 360,000,000 also. If Belgium were as large as China, Belgium would contain 400,000,000 inhabitants.” These eighteen provinces form very nearly a square, and are by measurement about 1500 miles either way. Take the average railway-speed of the North-Western Manchester express, and you might traverse China from north to south, or from east to west, in about thirty-seven hours. There is surely nothing here which should make the imagination very giddy. One can understand a drive over an Eastern Lombardy for a day, a night, and a day. The population, however, does not lie in a uniform way; it is thickest on the eastern sea-board, thinnest towards the south. There appears to be very ready access by the great rivers to the more important and fertile district of the empire.

It was upon the 1st of August, now last past, that an English brigadier divested himself of his nether integuments, and leaping waist-high into the slush opposite Peh-Tang, led on 200 men of the 2nd Queen’s in the same airy costume to strike the final blow at the great Chinese mystery. This time, as the phrase runs, there is to be no mistake about it. We were befooled after Sir Henry Pottinger’s negotiations, and foiled after those which were more recently conducted under Lord Elgin’s auspices; but now the work is to be done in such a manner that it may stand. The wretched and treacherous attack upon the British last year on the Peiho river has filled up the measure of the iniquity of the Pekin protectionists, and ere long their place will know them no more. The final negotiations, it is to be hoped, will be concluded at Pekin, and not elsewhere, and in a manner which may convince the more bigotted politicians of that most conservative capital that of the Chinese mystery there is an end. By the next mail we shall probably hear that attempts have been made to induce the allied negotiators to sign the treaty of peace without making any display of armed force immediately before the capital. Here is what Sir John Barrow, as quoted by Captain Osborn, tells us about that city. The walls are from 20 to 30 feet high; square bastions project from them at every 70 yards; and upon each bastion there is a guardhouse. The city is an oblong square, the walls being fourteen English miles in extent. “In the south wall there are three gates—in the other sides, only two. The centre gate on the south side communicates directly with the Imperial palaces, or portion of the capital reserved for the Emperor and his family. Between the other two gates, and corresponding ones on the north side, run two streets, perfectly straight, about four miles long, and 120 feet wide. One street of a similar width runs from one of the eastern to one of the western gates of Pekin. The other streets of Pekin are merely narrow lanes, branching from and connecting these four great streets. At the four angles of the city walls, four-storied pagodas were observed, and similar buildings at the points of intersection of the four great streets. None of the streets were in any way paved; the narrow lanes appeared to be watered, but the great ones were covered with sand and dust.”

Such is Pekin—the key of China!