appreciated. Commerce with such a centre of civilized and inexhaustible productions of the field, the garden, the forest, the loom and the mine, enriches the nations engaged in it. These muscular and patient millions have been schooled by Providence to supply the rest of the world with the labor which is to make its wildernesses blossom as the rose. There Christendom sees spread before it its grandest and most inviting field of religious enterprise.

CHAPTER III.

GEOGRAPHY, VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS, ANIMALS.

WHEN we turn to consider the physical characteristics of China, the first impression made upon an American-one which has been remarked upon by several of our writers-is its general resemblance to his own country. This may be traced in more particulars than I have yet seen mentioned.

China is the great empire of Asia, as the United States is, in a freer sense, that of America. It fronts eastward and southward upon the Pacific, as the United States do upon the Atlantic ocean. Upon the coast of each a great gulf stream, rising in the tropics, sweeps northward and eastward, making its vicinity stormy, and attracting to its tepid waters multitudes of fish. The terrific cyclones or hurricanes rising in the south move regularly in the same directions along each continent and expire in the ocean. States lie somewhat more to the mean annual heat and of the limit of the fall of snow at the level of the sea maintain a general correspondence. The extreme difference between the mean temperature of the coldest month of the year and that of the warmest (55° to 95°), which marks the New England, is also felt on the northern Chinese coast. For

Though the United north, the lines of

mosa is the Florida of China. The Philippine Islands are its West Indies. Two great mountain chains bind its extremes into one grand domain, though we observe that the all-wise ends of the Supreme Governor planned their courses in the Old World, according to the wants. of the human tenants, from the west to the east, but in the New World from the north to the south. The immense river system of the Mississippi finds its parallel in that of the Yang-tsz-kiang-two which are only exceeded by the Amazon and La Plata in the quantity of water which they discharge into the sea. The geographical purposes of the great fresh-water lakes of the New World are largely provided for in the Hwang-ho and Amoor rivers. The United States and China have each their great deposits of precious metals in the west and north-west. Each have their wheat and apples in the north, their rice and oranges in the south, though rice is more of a national diet with the latter. In each, the inhabitants of the north are more muscular and more fair. The wild western territories of each are kept in continual agitation by barbarous tribes, whose glory is their herds of horses, their skill in the use of the bow and the spear, and, we might perhaps add, in taking the scalps of their enemies, for this was also an ancient Scythian or Tartar luxury. It would be easy to draw the analogies between the mental character and the institutions of the people of China and those of the United States, but that subject it is better to reserve for another place.

With this comparison, which will convey a clearer idea of the physical characteristics of China, I proceed to supply, largely from the excellent English compilation mentioned in the Preface, some further particulars.

With its dependencies and tributary states the Chinese Empire extends from the Sea of Japan to the head waters of the Indus among the Himmaleh mountains in the west a space of seventy-one degrees of longitude, equal, in a straight line, to three thousand statute miles. From north to south it stretches from the Ural mountains, in north latitude 50°, to the southern border, about latitude 21°, being twenty-nine degrees, or nearly two thousand three hundred miles. Of this immense area, China Proper measures about twelve hundred statute miles in length, and not much less in average breadth. The empire proper, which the people usually designate the Eighteen Provinces, contains nearly one million three hundred thousand square miles. The territorial possessions contain about three million seven hundred thousand additional. Their populations profess dependence on the Celestial Empire, or have the laws and manners, and speak or read the language, of the Chinese, with whom, in fact, they are almost identified.

The climate of China presents every variety of temperature, from the snows and chilling blasts of Siberia to the scorching heat of the torrid zone on its southern borders. That of the north-western provinces is made distressingly hot and dry when the wind during the summer months blows from the great deserts of the interior. Even in Canton, where the tropical heat of the season is tempered by the friendly south-west monsoon, which blows almost steadily day and night, a change of the wind for two or three days, bringing these ovenlike blasts, is almost intolerable. It is amusing to witness in that latitude the eagerness of the people when once