Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/233

Rh it, has also been explored, revealing the fact that the country drained by the old river, whose channel is now dry, was the seat of an extensive civilization, of which nothing now remains but the ruins. Explorations have been made in the Himalaya Mountains, with a view to a railroad across Asia. The river Han-kiang, in China, hitherto almost unknown, has been found to be of great commercial importance. For the last four years the rich and prosperous country around Tien Tsin, in China, has been lying under water from inundations to a depth of nearly five feet, and the unfortunate inhabitants of this once fertile region have been driven to seek new homes in the waste country north of the Great Wall. Many unknown regions have been visited by travelers and explorers, who found new countries, peoples, and customs. In the Kassia tribes, between Siam and Burmah, the doctrine of woman's rights is fully carried out. The women own the land, live in their own houses, do the courting, marrying, divorcing, and the lion's share of work; the men, being the weaker half, and not responsible for the maintenance of the family, do comparatively nothing, and take life easy!

A savage tribe, the remnant of a very ancient people, has been visited on the western coast of India. They are remarkable for their unswerving truthfulness. The women wear over their usual garment an apron of green leaves, the relic of an ancient custom, suggesting a passage in Genesis. In the central provinces the site of an ancient city has been discovered buried in dense jungles, and bearing inscriptions of two and a half centuries before Christ. The inscriptions are chiefly the records of donors of columns, like those seen in the gift-windows of our own churches.

In Palestine, Lieutenant Conder, R. E., has made important discoveries of ruins in the hill-country of Judah, which he thinks he can identify with some of the lost Biblical cities. He has found lost boundary-stones, which may prove to be the ancient Levitical landmarks. Discoveries have also been made upon Mount Zion.

At the mouth of the Persian Gulf there is a small island, of about twelve miles in circumference, called Ormus, or Hormus. Though a barren rock, it became, in the sixteenth century, from its geographical position, a place of great commercial importance and wealth, where the trade between Europe and the East was transacted. A town arose three miles in length along the coast and two miles in width. The Abbe Raynal describes it as presenting a more splendid appearance than any city in the East, and, he says, unusual opulence, an extensive commerce, the politeness of the men, and the attraction of the women, made it the seat of pleasure as well as trade. Milton refers to it in "Paradise Lost," where he describes Satan in council. Last year, Lieutenant Stiffo, of the British Navy, visited Ormus, and found that even its building-materials had been carried away, and that nothing remained of the once great and opulent city but a ruined minaret