Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/209

Rh from the sea, out of reach of existing means of transportation, and practically buried in the interior. If they cannot be got at, or if, when reached, they cannot and will not trade, then it is not worth while to consider any general forward movement.

In the course of my journey in the interior of China, I went through the province of Hu-peh, which the Yang-tze Kiang traverses; the province of Kwang-tung, lying along the China Sea, and, between these two, the province of Hu-nan, which practically had not been traversed before by white men. Here evidently was virgin soil, and its condition can, therefore, be taken as a criterion of what the Chinaman is when unaffected by foreign influences. Even here I found that, although the foreigner's foot might never before have trodden the streets of the cities, his goods were already exposed for sale in the shopwindows.

In thinking of the Chinese, especially those in the interior, we are wont to consider them as uncivilized; and so they are, if measured scrupulously by our peculiar standards. But, on the other hand, they might say with some justice that we are not civilized according to the standards that they have set for themselves, founded on an experience of four thousand years. "With all its differences from ourselves, a nation that has had an organization for five thousand years; that has used printing for over eight centuries; that has produced the works of art that China has produced; that possesses a literature antedating that of Rome or Athens; whose people maintain shrines along the highways in which, following the precepts of the classics to respect the written page, they are wont to pick up and burn printed papers rather than have them trampled under foot; and which, to indicate a modern instance, was able to furnish me with a native letter of credit on local banks in unexplored Hu-nan, can hardly be denied the right to call itself civilized. In the interior—in those parts where no outside influence has ever reached—we found cities whose walls, by their size, their crenelated parapets, and their keeps and watch-towers, suggested mediæval Germany rather than Cathay. Many of the houses are of masonry, with decorated tile roofs, and elaborately carved details. The streets are paved with stone. The shops display in their windows articles of every form, of every make. The streams are crossed by arched bridges unsurpassed in their graceful outline and good proportions. The farmer lives in a group of farm buildings enclosed by a compound wall—the whole exceeding in picturesqueness any bit in Normandy or Derbyshire. The rich mandarin dresses himself in summer in brocaded silk, and in winter in sable furs. He is waited on by a retinue of well-trained servants, and will invite the stranger to a dinner at night composed of ten or fifteen courses, entertaining him with a courtesy and intricacy of etiquette that Mayfair itself cannot excel. Such are actual