6 Mr. Davis's Memoir concerning the Chinese. 



of the northern half of modern China ; but which, after the lapse of not 

 much more than four centuries, was doomed again to be divided into three 

 or four parts. 



Chi-hoang-ti, the First Emperor, as his name seems to import, had 

 hardly established his authority, when the Tartars, or barbarians of the 

 north, began to make incursions over the extensive frontiers. The Emperor 

 succeeded in driving them back into their desarts, and then employed the 

 united resources of his dominions in the erection of the vast Wall, which 

 has existed during a space of two thousand years, and remains to this day a 

 stupendous, though nearly useless, monument of the ambitious disposition 

 of this prince.* As if determined, however, to Jiave a counterpoise to the 

 reputation which this great work entitled him to, or influenced by a spirit 

 not unlike that by which Erostratus was inspired, when he burned the 

 Ephesian temple, the same Emperor issued a general order that all the 

 books of the learned should be cast into the flames. Though a great many, 

 of course, escaped tiiis sweeping sentence, his memory is execrated by the 

 literati of China. 



It is stated in the history of that period, that Japan was colonized from 

 China during the same dynasty ; and there appears to myself some grounds 

 for giving credit to the record. The union of the different states under his 

 single authority, and the magnificent turn of mind that prompted C/ii- 

 hoang-ti to carry into execution such a work as tlie Great Wall, were most 

 likely to urge him to schemes of colonization, whicli are sometimes very 

 analogous to tliose of conquest ; and the extension of his new dominions to 

 the shores of the Eastern Sea was still farther calculated to suggest such 

 ideas. I am well aware that the Japanese have been asserted by some to 

 have peopled their islands as early as the 13th century before Christ, and 

 that those people are said to disdain the very idea of being descended from 

 the Chinese. If, however, we remark the striking similarity that exists 

 between the persons, the manners, tiie dispositions, and the policy of the 

 two nations, we cannot but recognize them to be of onefamiltj ; and the fact 

 of the Japanese making use of the Chinese written language, and reve- 



* The substance of the Great Wall, which extends along a space of 1,500 miles, from the 

 shore of the Yellow Sea to Western Tartary, has been estimated by Mr. Barrow to exceed in 

 quantity that of all the houses in Great Britain, and to be capable of surrounding the whole earth 

 with a wall several feet high. 



