bleeding fragments by the resistance of paganism to the necessary progress of the gospel and the science of civilized lands—or will it be a homogeneous Christian empire, one of the grandest and strongest in the history of mankind, shedding blessings over the entire continent and its adjacent islands, and communicating them to distant lands to which it will have owed not alone a debt of great evil, but also a debt of greater good?

CHAPTER XIV.

AMERICAN RELATIONS WITH THE CHINESE EMPIRE.

THE

HE relations between our country and China date back to the period when the United States were yet the colonies of Great Britain, and even had something to do with the measures which resulted in giving us national independence.

The East India Company early set itself to the development of a trade in the Colonies which would be profitable to its treasury. It sent here some of the tea which it brought from China, and sought for such products of the New World as would afford a profitable return cargo for its ships, and a means through which it could save the payment of specie in exchange for the merchandise of the Celestial Empire. The ginseng of the Northern Colonies was one of the first articles which proved advantageous to its purposes. Agents were sent to New England, who induced the Indians to search for this medicinal root by rewards of money, whisky, trinkets and calico. The Christian people who were interested in civilizing these wild tribes, elevating their morals and giving them the blessings of the worship of God on the Sabbath and of education for their children, were sorely grieved by the vagrant habits, the drunkenness and other vices which were fostered by this busi

ness, and some of the first missionaries to the Indians, in their letters to the churches of the mother-country, made complaint of the injury which it did to religion.

The East India Company had some share in the political oppression which led the Colonies to revolt. Their charges for tea were so grievous that the people were compelled to smuggle it from their Dutch neighbors of the colony of New Amsterdam, on the Hudson. Lord Townshend, in 1767, carried a bill through Parliament which laid a duty of three pence a pound on tea, with something upon paper, glass and paints. This only increased the evil, and it aroused the question of the right to impose taxation upon those to whom the mother-country allowed no political representation. The colonists refused to use tea brought from England. The losses to the East India Company were, in consequence, so great as to threaten it with bankruptcy. It could not pay its dividends or debts, and its stock went down to half its former value. At the suggestion of Lord North, Parliament authorized the company to ship its tea to America without previously paying the duty in England. The people of Boston, of Philadelphia, of New York, of Charleston and of other places, now determined that tea should not be brought to the country. The first cargoes came to Boston. And there was performed one of the acts which began the great struggle for Independence. On the evening of the sixteenth of December, 1773, a company of citizens, disguised as Indians, seized three ships, which had recently arrived, and without injuring any other articles, in three hours broke open three hundred and forty chests of tea, and emptied what the company had bought at the fac

tories at Canton, and transported twenty thousand miles, out into the icy and briny waters of the harbor. So the East India Company, the ill-gotten wealth it poured into the British treasury and its Chinese trade, have a niche in the history of this nation.

As soon as the war was ended, our people hastened to engage for themselves in the rich trade with China. The ship Empress, commanded by Captain Green, left New York for Canton on the anniversary of the birthday of General Washington, February 22, 1784, six months after the definitive treaty of peace with Great Britain was signed at Paris.

The development of the commerce with China has been in a remarkable and very important manner connected with that of our national territory, our internal trade and prosperity, and even with our missionary efforts in other parts of the world.

The winter climate of Southern China is raw and changeable; that of the north is quite cold. The people cannot afford fuel to warm their houses, and so protect themselves by an increase of clothing. The better classes, from the earliest history of the empire, have been accustomed at that season of the year to clothe themselves with an abundance of warm and rich furs. Robes and capes of various kinds are worn, some of which are very elegant and very expensive. They constitute, indeed, a not unimportant item of the wealth which is transmitted in families. Previous to the discovery of America these furs were supplied by the wild Asiatic tribes on the north and the west of the empire. The exportation of them from the colonies of the New World to China was begun by the English, Dutch,

French and Spaniards. The English North-west and Hudson's Bay Companies planted their posts and sent forth their agents and trappers over the vast regions north of the great lakes to the borders of the Arctic zone, and westward even beyond the Rocky Mountains. They collected the furs of the muskrat, otter, marten, ermine, beaver, silver and other species of fox, fitch, chinchilla, mink and the coarser ones of several other animals. But a sudden and great impulse was given to the fur trade by the discovery of the abundance of the sea-otter and other fur-bearing animals on the northwest coast of the continent, which was made by Captain James Cook and his companions during his third voyage to the Pacific ocean. When the information which they obtained was published in the winter of 1784, the attention of the mercantile world was at once directed to this new field for adventure. Numerous vessels were sent there within the next few years. These discovered new groups of islands in the Pacific ocean, and explored the scarcely known western shores of the continent. Captain Gray, who was the first man that carried the American flag round the world in 1787 to 1790, at that time explored Queen Charlotte's Sound, and during his next voyage, in May, 1792, discovered the Columbia river and named it after his own vessel. This was the basis of the American claim to the territory which the Columbia river drains.

The opening up of these sources of wealth upon the coast naturally suggested the importance of securing a connection with them across the continent, whose interior until that time was almost as unknown as the heart of Africa. It was considered to be as wild and incapable