India and Europe. Nanyong is the last town in the province of Canton and the head of navigation. Here the river is narrow, with steep, rocky banks, and travellers leave their boats to cross over the mountain to Nanyang, the first town in the province of Kiangsee, a distance of twelve or fourteen miles, where boats are again taken on the river Kan to lake Poyang, at its junction with the Kiang. Though the ascent of the mountain is steep, the road is well paved, and at the summit or the gate, it is cut through solid rock thirty or forty feet deep. This passage is so crowded with drays and carts, or rather with asses, and men acting as beasts of burden, in transporting goods from river to river, that it resembles Pearl street more than it does a highway. This is the only convenient place of crossing the mountain, and consequently it is made the great thoroughfare for transporting the silks of Nankin, the porcelain of Yao tcheou, and the cotton of Hounan and Houpe. From the splendid prospect towards Canton and the ocean, the traveller now turns his eye, and sees on the other side nothing but a wild mountainous district, threaded by a silver stream. The distance now to the Kiang, is about 400 miles. A little down the Kan, at Kan tcheou (tcheou, a town, like Charlestown, Jamestown, &c.), are bends in the river and rapids, not unlike the Highlands on the Hudson, with mountains of fit trees overhanging, and rendering the scene highly picturesque. Here a tow-path is hewn out at the river's edge, to work the barges and endless trains of timber-floats through the narrow passage. After passing through a flourishing district, spotted with cities and villages, the traveller reaches Nan tchang, the splendid capital of the province, where hundreds of imperial barges lie at anchor. Here the vale of the river begins to open, and spreads into a broad plain, reaching to lake Poyang. On the east side of this lake, which is 70 or 80 miles in length, and is specked with many beautiful islands, is the porcelain district, where the whitest and most delicate China-ware is made. Yao tcheou is the porcelain emporium, and is one of the wealthiest cities of the empire. The ware is prepared a few miles northeast of this city.

After these details, it would be interesting to hear at length the general remarks and philosophical reflections of this prince of geographers. But we must content our

selves with the following summary, condensed from his work.

The great ocean current, which finds an outlet among the Ladrones, beats directly against the coast of China, producing a tide that flows more than 500 miles up the Kiang. This maritime part of China is filled with bays, lakes, streams, canals and marshes; and the periodical succession of dry land and water by the tides, produces an effect upon the soil and its millions of inhabitants, to be observed in no other country on the globe. The relation between the coast and the ocean is highly characteristic of China, having no parallel in the northern hemisphere; and even that of Brazil, in the southern, has only a distant resemblance. The natural inland communication of this part of China is so much improved by art, that no part of the world can be compared to it. Such facilities for intercourse have a wonderful influence upon its myriads of inhabitants, by resisting the tendencies to individuality which exist in unconnected provinces. The action and reaction of mind upon mind, brought thus in contact, give a great uniformity of character to the whole population.

Nearly all the rivers of China come in parallel lines from the mountains in the west. But the canals run north and south, cutting these rivers at right angles. The smaller streams supply the canals, and the larger serve as drains to carry off the superfluous water. The whole coast, from Pekin to the mountain near Hang tcheou, is traversed by the imperial canal, which is like the trunk of a great tree sending out innumerable branches. Such a canal in Europe would connect the Baltic with the Adriatic and this with the Euxine. In magnitude, this compares only with the great wall, and far surpasses it in utility. Only in a country, where despotism controls the labors of millions, would it be possible to construct either; and only in a country of so uniform a water level could such a gigantic canal be formed without a single interruption. It winds its crooked course around elevations, and, with a considerable current, in a channel from 200 to 1000 feet in breadth, makes its majestic way sometimes through large bodies of standing water, often above towns and villages, and occasionally through mountains.

The chief influence of the canal on the condition of China arises from its opening a communication, not only

between the individual provinces, but between the north and the south of China. In no other way could the barren province of Pe che le and Pekin be furnished with the abundance of rice produced by the rich soil of the Delta. The insecurity of the coast navigation, the sandbanks and currents and tornadoes of the Yellow sea, the miserable construction of the Chinese junks, the common dread of the wide ocean, and, above all, the want of nautical skill, present to the Chinese such obstacles, that comparatively few voyages are made by sea. An attempt by Kublia Khan, in 1292, to transport by the coast the productions of the south to the capital, was attended with the loss of 10,000 lives from the single harbor of Canton. If, as has often happened, pirates interrupted the transport vessels, famine in the north was the inevitable consequence. For these reasons, all the business between the north and the south of China centres on the canal. On the short route from Pekin to Tiensing, on the bay, the English embassy met 1000 barges with 50,000 men, besides innumerable small boats, so that this branch had, reckoning the barges going in the opposite direction at the same rate, a constant floating population of 100,000. It is estimated that the imperial transport vessels, employed on the canal in collecting the tribute, always in rice, is not less than 10,000, and the men employed in them not less than 200,000. Add to this the swarm of merchant boats, that almost touch each other in the central portion of the canal, and you can form some notion of that busy scene of action.

One fourth of China lies constantly under water, or is so marshy as to be incapable of tillage. Over this whole territory there are annual inundations, as on the banks of the Nile and the Ganges. All this would take place by means of the great rivers coming from Thibet, even though not a drop of rain were to fall here, and though no swelling tide were to rush in from the opposite direction. The building of dams, repairing damages of floods, opening or completing canals, are recorded as among the great events of history. In the Imperial Geography, the descriptions of the canals in the several provinces, constitute one of the principal chapters; and, in treating of Shensee, which is least provided with them, 350 pages of this work are occupied in describing them. No man

darin can make any pretensions to learning, who is not perfectly acquainted with those of his province, and the governor of the province must know their history, their measurement, and all the mathematical reckoning for dams, sluices, and branch canals. With all the details of this branch of knowledge, the imperial ministers are as familiarly acquainted as our professors of botany and conchology are with the details of their science.

But the influence of the hydrographic system of China is still greater on the modes of life among the industrious classes. Of those productions which depend on this system of irrigation, we will mention that of rice alone, the staple article of food for three hundred millions of inhabitants, and which grows only on the coast south of the Hoangho. It yields regularly two harvests in a year, the one in May, the other in October. Not only all the other parts of China, but the Manchows, and even the Mongols of the barren Gobi, as far back as to Siberia, are all dependent on the rice crops. The great army of the emperor, as well as the army of civil officers, in that complicated government, from the highest to the lowest, receive half their pay in rice. All the taxes of the nation are paid in rice; and hence the number of revenue vessels. Rice-dealing is thus the basis of Chinese trade; and the Delta, where this article is grown, is the centre of business, and the seat of the densest population. Whenever the rice crops fail, millions die of famine.

The inhabitants are not all so fortunate as to have land to stand upon; many must be content to lead a kind of nomadic life, on the water; for in such extensive lowlands, a large part is necessarily in a middle state between land and water. Many lakes, and marshes, and channels, as in Shautung and Kiangnan, are covered with dwellings, as much as the land. All the waters of China are free, no tax whatever being paid for fisheries, and the peculiar culture of this floating soil. Whole tribes of fishermen, in floating villages, without country and without home, wander about from place to place, like the fish of the sea, or the fowls of the air. Their vessels are

connected into large floats; in the rear are small artificial gardens; and thus the backyards of these sailing farmers are covered with vegetable products, and are alive with ducks and swine.

In dwelling so long on the first work which we proposed to notice, we have consulted the wants of the English reader, attempting, from a rare and foreign production, to furnish him with a useful introduction to those English works which we are yet to recommend. Partly in pursuance of the same design, and partly for other considerations, which can easily be divined, we now turn to Jack's charming Pocket Library of Travels, so far as they relate to China.

This is an admirable work, both in its plan and its execution. Various methods have been adopted to give to the public, in a cheap form, the substance of numerous and costly books of travels. A favorite method with the English, at the present day, is to prepare a manual on a particular country, including history, political divisions, natural productions, &c., &c., arranged in separate chapters, and in a didactic form. Egypt, Palestine, and other volumes in the Family Library, may be taken as specimens. But here, as in all cases where every thing is professedly taught in a compendious way, superficiality is necessarily the most distinguishing characteristic. Another and better plan is that pursued by Conder, in the Modern Traveller, of introducing into geographical descriptions, travellers' routes, and historical notices. But here all the charm of personal narrative and incident are sacrificed, and the book can have no soul, no internal bond of unity. Our author, in his Pocket Library, has chosen the more attractive form of a series of personal travels, keeping up a lively interest in the fates and fortunes of each traveller, retaining the most entertaining, as well as instructive parts, and abridging what is dull and unprofitable. We do not pretend that all the value of the original works is retained; that would be an absurd pretension. And yet we believe it is precisely in this way, that the object proposed can be best attained. only does the reader accompany the traveller, and see all the various scenes through which he passes, and thus learn both the country and the people by observation, but in the successive travels in the same country, he visits them from century to century, and witnesses their progress in the various stages of modern history. Nor is the reader wearied by repetition in the successive narratives. The routes vary; one traveller gives him one specimen of

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