Travels in China, Sir John Barrow [phonics readers txt] 📗

character, that are spread over every part of the eastern world, and who in countless swarms once overran all Europe, but was grounded on a supposition, that the whole surface of the globe, or the greater part of it, has at one time been submerged in water, and that Tartary was the last to be covered, and the first that was uncovered; and the place from whence, of course, a new set of creatures were forged as in a workshop, from some remnant of the old stock, to be the germs of future nations.

Almost every part of the earth, indeed, affords the most unequivocal indications that such has actually been the case, not only in the several marine productions that have been discovered in high mountains, at a distance from any sea, and equally deep under the surface of the earth; but more especially in the formation of the mountains themselves, the very highest of which, except those of granite, consisting frequently of tabular masses piled on each other in such regular and horizontal strata, that their shape and appearance cannot be otherwise accounted for, or explained by any known principle in nature, except by supposing them at one time to have existed in a state of fluidity, by the agency of fire or of water, a point which seems to be not quite decided between the Volcanists and the Neptunists. The heights of Tartary are unquestionably the highest land in the old world. In America they may, perhaps, be exceeded. Gerbillon, who was a tolerable good mathematician and furnished with instruments, assures us, that the mountain Pe-tcha, very inferior to many in Tartary, is nine Chinese lees, or about fifteen thousand feet, above the level of the plains of China. This mountain, as well as all the others in the same country, is composed of sand stone, and rests upon plains of sand, mixed with rock salt and saltpetre. The Sha-moo, or immense desert of sand, which stretches along the north-west frontier of China and divides it from western Tartary, is not less elevated than the Pe-tcha, and is said to resemble the bed of the ocean. Some of the mountains starting out of this sea of sand, which its name implies, cannot be less than twenty thousand feet above the level of the eastern ocean.

The formation of the earth affords a wide field for speculation; and, accordingly, many ingenious theories have been conceived to explain the various appearances which its surface exhibits. The best modern naturalists seem, however, to agree, that water has been one of the principal agents to produce these effects. The great Linnæus, whose penetrating mind pervaded the whole empire of nature, after many and laborious enquiries, acquiesced in the truth of the sacred writings, that the whole globe of the earth was, at some period of time, submerged in water, and covered with the vast ocean, until in the lapse of time one little island appeared in this immense sea, which island must have been of course the highest mountain upon the surface of the earth. In support of his hypothesis, he adduces a number of facts, many of which have fallen within his own observation, of the progressive retreat of the sea, the diminution of springs and rivers, and the necessary increment of land. Among the most remarkable of these are the observations made by the inhabitants of Northern Bothnia upon the rocks on the sea coast, from whence it appeared that, in the course of a century, the sea had subsided more than four feet; so that six thousand years ago, supposing the rate of retiring to have been the same, the sea was higher than at present by two hundred and forty feet. Such great and sensible depression of the water of the sea must, however, have been only local, otherwise, as I have elsewhere observed, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean would have joined within the period of history. The sea, it is true, in some parts of the world, gains upon the land, and in others the land upon the sea, but these effects arise from a different cause to that which is supposed to produce a general retreat. It is true, also, that in the neighbourhood of mountains and great rivers, very material changes have taken place in the course of a few ages. The fragments of the former, worn away by the alternate action of the sun and rains, are borne down by the torrents of the latter, and deposited in the eddies formed by the two banks of the rivers where they join the sea, producing thus alluvious land as, for example, the Delta of Egypt, which has gradually been deposited out of the soil of Abyssinia and Upper Egypt; the plains of the northern parts of China, which have been formed out of the mountains of Tartary; and those of India from the Thebetian mountains, and the other high lands to the northward and westward of the peninsula. As, however, a much greater proportion of the fragments borne down by rivers must be deposited in the bosom of the deep than on its shores, the sea by this constant and effective operation ought rather to advance than to retreat. We may therefore, perhaps, conclude that, whatever the changes may have been which the surface of the earth has undergone, with regard to the proportion and the portion of land and water, the appearances we now behold in various parts of the globe can only be explained by supposing some temporary and preternatural cause, or else by assuming an incalculable period of time for their production.

But to return from this digression to the more immediate subject of the present section. It is sufficiently remarkable, and no inconsiderable proof of the truth of the Sacred Writings, that almost every nation has some traditionary account of a deluge, some making it universal, and others local: presuming, however, the former to be correct, which is not only justified by the testimony of the author of the Pentateuch, but by natural appearances, it might perhaps be shewn, with no great deviation from the generally received opinion, that, instead of Persia being the hive in which was preserved a remnant of the ancient world for the continuation of the species, those who have supposed Tartary to be the cradle, from whence the present race of men issued, have adopted the more plausible conjecture. If it be borne in mind that, in every part of the Bible history, the expressions are accommodated to the understandings of those for whom they were intended, rather than strictly conformable to facts, and more consonant to appearances than realities, it may be supposed, without any offence to the most rigid believer, that by the mount Ararat was not strictly meant the identical mountain of that name, which has been recognised in Armenia, but rather the highest mountain on the face of the globe; for, if this were not the case, the Mosaic account would be contradictory in itself, as we are told that, "all the high hills that were under the whole Heaven were covered." This concession being allowed, we may suppose that the ark, instead of resting in Armenia, first struck ground in that part of Tartary which is now inhabited by the Eleuths, as being the most elevated tract of country in the old world. From these heights large rivers flow towards every quarter of the horizon. It is here that the sources of the Selenga are found, descending to the northward into the lake Baikal, and from thence by the Enesei and the Lena into the Frozen Ocean: of the Amour, which empties its waters to the eastward into the gulph of Tartary: of the two great rivers of China flowing to the southward, and of numberless lakes and rivers discharging their waters to the westward, some burying themselves in deserts of sand, and others working their way to the great lake of Aral and the Caspian sea.

From such a situation, admitting the earth to have been peopled in succession, the two great rivers which took the southerly direction and crossed the fertile and extensive plains of China, were fully as likely to direct the few survivors of the deluge to this country, as that they should follow any of the other streams; and probably more so, as these led to a warmer and more comfortable climate, where fewer wants were felt and those few more easily supplied. Considered in this point of view, the opinion of the Jesuits will not appear so ill founded, which supposes that Noah, separating from his rebellious family, travelled with a part of his offspring into the east, and founded the Chinese monarchy; and that he is the same person as the Foo-shee[38] of their history. The words of scripture from the east, an ingenious commentator has observed, ought more properly to be translated, at the beginning. At all events, the fact I conclude to be irresistible, that the Tartars and the Chinese have one common origin, and the question then is simply this, whether the fertile plains of China were abandoned for the bleak and barren heights of Tartary, or that the wandering and half-famished Scythians descended into regions whose temperature and productions were more congenial to the nature of man.

If, however, we allow China to have been among the first nations formed after the flood, it does not appear to have kept pace in learning and in arts with the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, or the Egyptians. Before the time of Confucius, its progress in civilization seems to have been very slow. He was the first person who digested any thing like a history of the kings of Loo; for, in his time, the country was divided among a number of petty princes, who lived at the head of their families, much in the same manner as formerly the chiefs of the clans in the Highlands of Scotland; or, perhaps, more properly speaking, like the German princes, whose petty states are so many parts of one great empire. It is now about two thousand years since the several monarchies were consolidated in one undivided and absolute empire. There are several reasons for supposing that, before this period, China made no great figure among the polished nations of the world, although it produced a Confucius, some of whose works demonstrate a vigorous and an enlightened mind. From the commentaries of this philosopher on one of their classical books[39], it would appear that a regular succession of Emperors could be traced near two thousand years back from his time, or more than four thousand years from the present period. The duration of the dynasties, with their several Emperors, which he enumerates, and the detail of occurrences in each reign, make the truth of the history sufficiently plausible, though the chronology, from their total ignorance of astronomy, must necessarily be defective. It is still an extraordinary circumstance, that none of the ancient classical authors should have had the least knowledge of such a nation. Homer neither mentions them nor makes any allusion to such a people; and Herodotus seems to have been equally ignorant of their existence; and yet, according to the best chronologists, Herodotus and Confucius must have been contemporaries. It may fairly be concluded then, that the early Greeks had no knowledge of the Chinese. Even more than a century after the father of history flourished, when the Persian empire was overthrown by Alexander, it does not appear that the Chinese were known to this nation; which in all probability would have been the case, notwithstanding their aversion to any intercourse with foreigners, had they constituted, at that time, a large and powerful empire; perhaps, indeed, the ignorance of the Persians might arise from the intervention