should have proved fatal to any one individual belonging to the Embassy.

The author saw the elegant carriage which the King of Great Britain sent to the Emperor of China; and opposite to it was placed

A thing, which made a remarkable contrast with this splendid vehicle; viz. a Chinese waggon with four wheels of equal height, very clumsy, painted green all over, and in every respect resembling the waggons used in Holland for the purpose of carrying manure. I confess this sight set my imagination to work. Was this waggon placed here with a view of opposing the idea of its utility to that of the superfluity of a carriage so sumptuous, at least according to the estimation of the Chinese? I was thus giving way to my conjec tures, when I was told, that the waggon is the very same that is made use of at the annual ceremony, when the Emperor pays a solemn homage to agriculture, in the temple of the Earth.'

The Voo-tchong-tang, or first Minister of China, wore a watch made by Arnold, for which having given no more than 175 livres, (71. 158. sterling,) he thought that the price of some watches in the possession of the Dutch mechanist was too high. It would have been easy for the Embassy to give him a very intelligible explanation of the low price at which he had bought his watch but the fear of the consequences that might have attended it, in respect to the transactions of the Mandarins and merchants of Canton, and particularly the risk that might be run by the former, prevented M. Van Braam from entering into particulars. The enormous impositions, under which the European commerce at Canton labours, have often been explained by supposing that the Chinese Ministers of State connive at them from interested motives. This presumption, however, is unfounded; if, as the author positively asserts, the Ministers never accept a present from any one, without the express permission of the Emperor.

For the great antiquity of the Chinese as a nation, M. Van B. assigns a cause which does honour to his sentiments:

There is no nation so servilely attached to the usages and maxims of its ancestors as the Chinese. And we shall cease to be astonished at it, when we know, that filial respect is without bounds among them; that this tie of nature stands in the stead of legislation, the place of which it entirely supplies; and that their great philosopher, Kong-fou-tsé, by deducing all his principles of family relations from those between father and son, found means to acquire an authority, which served in its turn to strengthen that first natural sentiment, that primary foundation of every social system. And does it not seem as if the Divine blessing promised by the commandment, that requires the children of Israel to honour their parents, were become the portion of the Chinese! It is also in the execution of this sacred

law,

law, that, according to my weak judgment, we ought to seek the cause of the long duration of this nation, the only one excepting the Japanese (subject also to the strict observance of the same precept) which has preserved itself the same from a period which is lost in the most remote antiquity.'

A common plaything for children, which is to be found in every European fair, was shewn to M. Van B. by a gentleman of rank; who much admired it, and spoke in such terms as shewed that he thought himself the possessor of a wonder. From this circumstance, the author thinks it not at all improbable that such trifles would find a good market in China, and that they would perhaps amuse the Emperor himself as much as the most ingenious pieces of mechanism.

The police of the Chinese metropolis, though strict to excess, is far from being well regulated. Our traveller relates that the Chinese servants of the Embassy, having one day obtained permission to go into the city for the purpose of buying some necessaries, were discovered to be strangers at Pekin, and were lodged in a guard-house. In vain did they plead their being part of the retinue of the Dutch Embassy: the soldier accused them of selling opium, and began to search them. The seryants would have been sent to prison in chains, but for the bribe of a few dollars, which, being prepared for their intended. purchases, were now willingly sacrificed to procure their liberty. Thus even a Chinese is not perfectly safe in his own country, when found beyond the limits of his native pro

vince.

It was with much difficulty that the Embassy were permitted to have any communication with the European Missionaries resident at Pekin. From this jealousy, the author infers that the Mandarins, from the highest to the lowest, must be conscious of great culpability, or they would not have thought it necessary to carry distrust to such a length.

The manner in which the Chinese warm their apartments is more clearly described by M. Van B., than we recollect to have seen it in other accounts:

In all China,' says he, the houses are built upon the ground; i. e. without any cellar under them. The apartments are paved with flat, square bricks; a thing very agreeable in warm weather; but very little suitable to the severe season of the year.

To defend them from the piercing cold which they experience in the northern parts of the Empire, the Chinese have devised subterraneous furnaces in every direction, under the bricks of the floors, and under a kind of platforms on which the Chinese sleep. They even pass through the walls, which divide the different rooms, so that the heat diffused by the tubes produces in the apartments the temperature desired. The fire is kept up night and day in the outer

D 2

stove

stove or furnace, without the smallest danger to the buildings, because a coat of bricks closely confines that destructive element, and opposes its disastrous effects. If the apartments be spacious and numerous, an increased number of stoves and tubes always insure the same result.

It cannot be denied, that this is an invention honourable to Chinese industry; and certainly it is no small advantage in a severe climate, to enjoy in the midst of winter's cold an agreeable heat diffused through all the apartments. It is in those places especially, where these outer stoves are wanting, and where there is a necessity of having recourse to the brasiers of charcoal, of which I have spoken elsewhere, that the value of this invention is the most sensibly felt.'

Those of our readers who are acquainted with India will recollect the extraordinary ingenuity displayed by Hindu artisans, in executing the various branches of their business, and producing even the finest workmanship, by means of a few tools; which, to all appearance, are the most deficient and unmanageable. In China, the same observation may be

made.

During our stay this morning,' says M. Van B. in the village of Fan-koun, I had an opportunity of seeing a tinker execute what I believe is unknown in Europe. He mended and soldered fryingpans of cast iron that were cracked and full of holes, and restored them to their primitive state, so that they became as serviceable as ever. He even took so little pains to effect this, and succeeded so speedily, as to excite my astonishment. It must indeed appear im possible to any one who has not been witness to the process.

All the apparatus of the workman consists in a little box sixteen inches long, and six wide, and eighteen inches in depth, divided into two parts. The upper contains three drawers with the necessary ingredients; in the lower is a bellows, which, when a fire is wanted, is adapted to a furnace eight inches long and four inches. wide. The crucibles for melting the small pieces of iron intended to serve as solder are a little larger than the bowl of a common tobacco pipe, and of the same earth of which they are made in Europe; thus the whole business of soldering is executed.

The workman receives the melted matter out of the crucible upon a piece of wet paper, approaches it to one of the holes or cracks in the frying pan, and applies it there, while his assistant smooths it over by scraping the surface, and afterwards rubs it with a bit of wet linen. The number of crucibles which have been deemed necessary are thus successively emptied in order to stop up all the holes with the melted iron, which consolidates and incorporates itself with the broken utensil, and which becomes as good as new. The furnace which I saw was calculated to contain eight erucibles at a time; and while the fusion was going on was covered with a stone by way of increasing the intensity of the heat.'

The Chinese sowing-inachine partakes of the simplicity of their other instruments:

It consists of two sticks or pieces of wood about four feet long, the lower extremities of which are shod with a kind of iron wedge that serves to open the furrow. A little above is a square box placed between the two sticks, and tapering downwards in the shape of a funnel. Behind this is a plank put across for the purpose of covering up the furrow after the seed has fallen in. This instrument is put in motion by means of two wheels. Two Chinese draw it, while a third who guides with his two hands, first sows one and then the other furrow. I had already conceived from the regularity with which I observed every thing growing in the fields, that some machine was employed for sowing, and I was not a little pleased at having an opportunity of seeing both the instrument and the manner in which it is used.'

It is a favourite custom among the Chinese of elevated rank to keep by them coffins, containing the dead bodies of persons who had been dear to them. At Ping-yuen-chen, in the temporary lodgings of the Embassy, one of the halls was appropriated to several coffins inclosing dead bodies. Some of them bore marks of great antiquity. The author was also once in a pagoda at Honan, opposite to Canton, in which coffins are likewise deposited in little rows or separate spaces; and he was assured that some of them, were more than a century old.

There is a particular species of wood in China considered as unperishable; of this they make coffins, some of which cost more than a hundred and fifty louis d'ors. The Chinese, let his pecuniary means be ever so small, procures while living, either for himself or for his family, the best wood he can buy, and keeps it with great care at the entrance of his house, till wanted for the last abode of a being who is no more, but whose pride has survived him.'

In the province of Chantong, the sailing wheel-barrows, of which we have already taken notice in our former article, were again seen by M. Van Braam.

As the very existence of a considerable part of Holland depends on the firmness of its dykes, we might imagine that in this particular it stood unrivalled; yet the author mentions a Chinese embankment at least as handsome as those in Holland. The side towards the water descended with a great inclination, like the dykes made in the United Provinces within the last forty years; for it should seem that it had not been observed, till then, that the water has less action on a surface much inclined, than on a plane nearly perpendicular. The Chinese, however, proceeded on this principle from the first formation of their dams ;-and the inundation of their rivers, it must be owned, rendered strong embankments a matter of the utmost consequence. The formidable Yellow river, one of the most celebrated on the Asiatic continent, on account of its

extent and rapidity, causes so much mischief when overflowing its banks, that double dams have been thrown up on each side, an inner and an outer one; the care of which is entrusted to three Viceroys or Governors of Provinces; who are each obliged to reside in a city adjacent to the portion of the river which they superintend.

Many of our readers, we are persuaded, will be pleased with the following observations:

The stuff called Nam-king, or Nan-keen, which is manufactured at a great distance from the place of that name, in the district of Feng kiang-fou situated in the south-east of the province of Kiangnam and upon the sea-shore, is made of a brown kind of cotton, which it seems can only be grown in that quarter. The colour of nan-keen is natural, and not subject to fade. As the greater part of the inhabitants of Europe and other countries are in the persuasion that the colour of the stuff in question is given it by a dye, I am happy to have it in my power to rectify their error. The opinion that I combat was the cause of an order being sent from Europe a few years ago to dye the pieces of nan-keen of a deeper colour, because of late they were grown paler. The true reason of that change is not known; it was as follows:

Shortly after the Americans began to trade with China, the demand increased to nearly double the quantity it was possible to furnish. To supply this deficiency, the manufacturers mixed common white cotton with the brown; this gave it a pale cast, which was immediately remarked, and for this lighter kind no purchaser'could be found, till the other was exhausted. As the consumption is grown less during the last three years, the mixture of cotton is no longer necessary, and nankeen is become what it was before. By keeping them two or three years, it even appears that they have the property of growing darker. This kind of stuff must be acknowledged to be the strongest yet known. Many persons have found that clothes made of it will last three or four years, although for ever in the wash. This it is that makes them the favourite wear for breeches and waistcoats both in Europe and America. The white nankeen is of the same quality, and is made of white cotton as good as the brown, and which also grows in Kiang-nam.'

The quantity of rice annually imported into Pekin is truly astonishing. M. Van Braam was assured that the Emperor kept for that purpose nine thousand nine hundred and ninetynine vessels, each capable of carrying somewhat short of one hundred thousand weight of rice. By these means, more than seven hundred and fifty millions of pounds (French) of that grain are brought to Pekin. The majority of those who serve in the army, as well as those who belong to the court, are paid with this rice; and, enormous as this quantity is, it does not exceed what is usually wanted. Yet rice, it should seem, is not so general an article of food in China as many have asserted:

for