obliged to show their
written permits each time to the guard on duty at the gate of the
bridge. All of the foreign consuls with their families reside here in
elegant quarters, surrounding their European style of dwellings with
fine gardens, trees, and pleasant walks, and here they extend to
travelers hospitality only too open-handed and generous. They are
completely isolated from the outer world socially, and intelligent
visitors from abroad are cordially welcomed by them.

An inexhaustible agricultural capacity remains unimproved in China, and
the same may be said of her rich store of mineral wealth, which, under
American enterprise and facilities, would soon revolutionize the country
in its products and exports. Save the districts which are traversed by
the canals, the present means of communication between different parts
of the country are scarcely superior to those of Central Africa. The
so-called national roads are nearly impassable. No other country in the
world would be so surely and rapidly benefited by a thorough system of
railroads as would China. Gold and silver are found in nearly every
province of the Empire, the former being still procured by the most
primitive processes, such as washing the river sands by hand, which are
recharged by the freshets from the mountains,--a mode that would satisfy
only Chinese labor. Coal is the most widespread, most valuable, and most
accessible of all the buried treasures. If the twelve thousand miles of
coal-fields have made Great Britain the workshop of the world, what may
not be anticipated from the four hundred thousand square miles of
Chinese coal-fields, which are capable of supplying the whole world, at
the present rate of consumption, for thousands of years?

The depressing monotony in the customs, habits, and ideas of the
Chinese, as contrasted with their neighbors, the Japanese, forces itself
upon the notice of the traveler. There is no variety among the race,
either in manners, dress, or architecture; one section of the country
seems precisely like another, so far as the people are concerned,
however widely divided, and all follow one model. There is no
individuality. They look to the past not to the future. There is no such
possibility as a nation's standing still; it either retrogrades or
progresses. China, whose people do everything in a left-handed manner,
advances like a crab, backwards. It would seem as if she must eventually
dry up and die of old age; and