xpedition, speaks alike for the
domestic affections of the Chinese and for their ancient
literary culture.

"Twin trees whose boughs together twine,
Two birds that guard one nest,
We'll soon be far asunder torn
As sunrise from the west.

"Hearts knit in childhood's innocence,
Long bound in Hymen's ties,
One goes to distant battlefields,
One sits at home and sighs.

"Like carrier dove, though seas divide,
I'll seek my lonely mate;
But if afar I find a grave,
You'll mourn my hapless fate.

"To us the future's all unknown;
In memory seek relief.
Come, touch the chords you know so well,
And let them soothe our grief."

II.

INTERCOURSE BY SEA.

In 1388 the Mongols were expelled. The Christian bishopric was swept
away, and left no trace; but a book of the younger Polo, describing the
wealth of China, gave rise to marvellous results. Together with the
magnetic needle, which originated in China, it led to centuries of
effort to open a way by sea to that far-off fairyland. It was from Marco
Polo that Columbus derived his inspiration to seek a short road to the
far East by steering to the West,--finding a new world athwart his
pathway. It was the same needle, if not the same book, that impelled
Vasco da Gama to push his way across the Indian Ocean, after the Cape of
Good Hope had been doubled by Bartholomew Diaz. A century later the same
book led Henry Hudson to search for some inlet or strait that might
open a way to China, when, instead of it, he discovered the port of
New York.

The mariner's compass, which wrought this revolution on the map of the
world, is only one of many discoveries made by the ancient Chinese,
which, unfruitful in their native land, have, after a change of climate,
transformed the face of the globe.

The polarity of the loadstone was observed in China over a thousand
years before the Christian era. One of their emperors, it is said,
provided certain foreign ambassadors with "south-pointing chariots," so
that they might not go astray on their way home. To this day the
magnetic needle in China continues to be called by a name which means
that it points to the south. It heads a long list of contraries in the
notions of the Chinese as compared with our own, such, for example, as
beginning to read at the back of a book; placing the seat of honor on
the left hand; keeping to the lef