May 28, I860.] HINDU-CHINESE COUNTRIES. ' 189 



Eleven sheets of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India 

 have this year been added to the Atlas, making 61 sheets published, 

 and several more are in the hands of the engraver. 



The Hindu-Chinese Countries. — From the vast region which geo- 

 graphers have frequently designated by this name, and which 

 embraces 16 degrees of longitude and 13 of latitude, all intertropical, 

 our Society has had within the year three papers. The scanty inha- 

 bitants of this great region, as yet so imperfectly known to us, may 

 be very briefly sketched. The race of man, a peculiar one, would 

 seem to be one and the same throughout, but it is found in two 

 very diiferent states of social existence. The most advanced pos- 

 sesses an ancient civilisation, and the most considerable nations of 

 them are the Arracanese, the Burmese, the Peguans, the Shans or 

 Laos, the Siamese, the Cambodians, and the Anamites or people of 

 Cochin-China and Tonquin. But scattered among these are a rude 

 people, composed of many distinct tribes speaking for the most 

 part distinct languages, without knowledge of letters, and with but 

 slender knowledge of agriculture and the common arts of life. 



It is of the last of these people, under the designation of Karen, 

 which seems a general term of the Burmese language for a rude 

 or uncivilised people, that we have an account of some tribes 

 inhabiting the countries ceded to us by the Burmese, in the elabo- 

 rate Diary of Mr. Edward O'Eeilly, a functionary of our government 

 in Pegu, and a gentleman well skilled in the Burmese language. 

 The more civilised nations above enumerated have systematic 

 forms of religion, generally that of Buddha, received from India ; 

 while the rude tribes have only loose superstitions. It is among 

 the latter that the propagation of Christianity has been successful 

 to a degree, indeed, unknown in any part of India, it being com- 

 puted that not fewer than 40,000 of them have been converted 

 within the last thirty years. The credit of these conversions is due 

 to the American mission in Burmah, the founder and leader of which 

 was the late excellent, amiable, and prudent and judicious, though 

 zealous Dr. Judson. 



The second paper on the Hindu-Chinese countries is by a Fellow 

 of our Society, our Consul in Siam, Sir Robert Schomburgk. This 

 describes a journey which the Consul himself made from the 

 Siamese capital, Bangkok, to a town on the western coast of the 

 Gulf of Siam called Pecha-buri, never before described. Sir Eobert 

 Schomburgk has, I believe, suggested the feasibility of a ship-canal, 

 or at all events of a railway across the Isthmus of Kra, which would 

 VOL. IV. • ^ 



