use to this day. They
grind down a jet-black ink, in which they dip the brush, and hold it
vertically when they write. The manufacture of the ink is their secret,
and the "Indian ink" which we use in Europe is obtained from them. A
hundred years after Christ paper was made in China. In an ancient town
at Lop-nor, where wild camels now roam, I found a collection of Chinese
letters and documents on paper which had remained buried in the desert
since A.D. 265. In A.D. 600 the Chinese had invented the art of
printing, which in Europe was not invented until 850 years later.
The Chinese were acquainted with the magnetic needle 1100 years
before Christ, and made compasses, and they knew of gunpowder long
before Europeans. Three thousand years ago the Chinese were proficient
in the art of casting bronze. In the interior of the country are still
to be found most beautiful objects in bronze--round bowls on feet
decorated with lions and dragons, vases, dishes, cups, and jugs, all of
dark, heavy bronze executed with the finest and most artistic detail.
The porcelain manufacture attained its greatest excellence in the time
of Kang Hi and Kien Lung. Then were made vases, bowls, and dishes of
such exceeding perfection that neither the Chinese themselves nor any
other people at the present time can produce their match. The
arrangement of colours and the glaze excite the admiration of all
connoisseurs. Porcelain articles of this period are now extremely rare,
and fetch enormous prices. In Japan I saw a small green Chinese bowl on
three feet, with a cover, which had cost eleven hundred pounds. Compared
to the Kang Hi vases, the finest porcelain that can be produced nowadays
is mere rubbish.

The Chinese language is as singular as everything else in the great
kingdom. Every word is unchangeable. While we say "go, went, gone, will
go, should go, going," the Chinese always say simply "go." The precise
meaning is shown by the position of the word in a sentence or by the
help of certain auxiliary words, as, for example, "I morning go," "We
yesterday go," where the future or past tense is indicated by the words
"morning" and "yesterday." A single word, _li_, for instance, may have a
number of different significations, and what it denotes in any
particular case depends on the tone and pronunciation, on its position
in the sentence, and on the word which comes before or after. The
language is divided into many different dialects, of which the p