366 ' Voyage of the Novara. 



with their various significations, suffices to understand most 

 of the common Chinese books. These singular hieroglyphics 

 are not written horizontally but vertically. Moreover, the 

 Chinese begin from the right side, so that, directly the re- 

 verse of the European custom, the title of a Chinese book is 

 found on the first page, the leaf furthest to the right hand. 

 Long ago, the Chinese, like most other Asiatic nations at the 

 present day, wrote with metal styli upon split leaves of bam- 

 boo. Ever since the third century before Christ, however, 

 when the art was invented of making paper from the rind of 

 the mulberry tree and the bamboo cane, and preparing pin- 

 soot, glair, musk, glue, Indian-ink* (meli), and other sub- 

 expressed, is extremely interesting. Thus a heart with the badge of slavery over it 

 represents " anger ;" a hand, and the sign for the middle, signifies an " historian," 

 because it is his duty not to lean to either side ; by the sign of uprightness and 

 motion is represented "government," because it must always observe probity in the 

 transaction of affairs ; to indicate the idea of a " friend " two pearls are represented 

 side by side, because friendship is as rare as two pearls, exactly resembling each 

 other! The well-known French missionary Hue, in his valuable work on the 

 Chinese Empire, gives a variety of most interesting particulars respecting the 

 Chinese language. 



* A very abstruse treatise upon the preparation of the Chinese ink is contained in 

 the important labours of the Russian Embassy at Pekin, relating to China, publish- 

 ed in German by Dr. Abel and Mecklenburg, Berlin, F. Heinike, 1858, vol. ii. 

 p. 481. The information is borrowed from a small treatise which was written in 

 1398 by a certain Scheu-zsi-Sun, who had beep for thirty years engaged in the 

 fabrication of the India ink. The author therein mentions how, after he had tried 

 every Jcnown method, and every substance usually employed, without attaining any 

 result, he at last put them all on one side, mingling only pin-soot with glue together, 

 and diluting this mixture with but hot water, again kneaded it thoroughly, and thus 

 succeeded in getting an ink " black and lustrous as a child's eyes." According to 

 another method, India ink is prepared, besides pin-soot and lime, of a sort of tincture, 

 consisting of the following various pigments, — pomegranate-rind, sandal-wood, sul- 

 phate of iron and copper, gamboge, cinnobar, dragon's-blood, gold-leaf, musk, and 

 glair. This tint is said to be remarkable for preventing the glue fi'om getting spoiled 



