64 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



irrigation works, of the use of metals and the art of 

 casting them, of skin boats, of war chariots, and of so 

 many other items as to afford ground for his belief that 

 everything in Chinese antiquity and traditions points to 

 a western origin. 1 



I have now to consider the knowledge of the ancient 

 Chinese concerning the magnet and the amber, and their 

 oft-reputed invention of the mariner's compass. 



Lying to the south of the steep declivities of Gobi, on 

 the Asiatic continent, there is a fertile lowland where a 

 profuse semi-tropical vegetation exists, in abrupt contrast 

 with the sparse and rugged growth of the desolate northern 

 steppes. Here the warm and dry weather of the spring 

 months, followed by the abundant monsoon rains of early 

 summer, cause the bamboo and the wheat to flourish with 

 equal luxuriance, so that the products of the soil combine 

 the hardy character of those of the temperate zone with 

 the rapid advance to maturity of the tropical yield. This 

 territory was the nucleus of the Chinese Empire. Its situ- 

 ation being entirely inland, its inhabitants, under the 

 favorable conditions of soil and climate, became of neces- 

 sity, and above all, an agricultural people. 



From the adjacent dwellers in Thibet, India and Central 

 Asia, the Chinese were separated by a difference in lan- 

 guage, by natural barriers, and, artificially, by the great 

 wall which they built along the edge of the northern 

 cliffs. It was not until a comparatively late period in their 

 history that their boundary advanced, by conquest, to the 

 sea- coast. 



Endowed, therefore, originally with a territory situated 

 geographically to advantage, with a soil capable of provid- 

 ing for all their needs, surrounded by neighbors of the 

 same descent as themselves, whom they surpassed in civil- 



: Primitive Civilizations. N. Y., 1894, 16 et seq. 



