106 



a disappearance. In fact, only the system of government and those 

 who administer it are worn out and corrupt and have served their pur- 

 pose. The Chinaman has always preserved his sterling qualities: 

 honesty, sobriety, inclination to work, love of his family, attachment 

 to his home, which are his characteristic traits, have given him vitality, 

 increased his longevity, and constituted his real strength. The 

 Chinese absorb their conqueror, who disappears in the strong indi- 

 viduality of the vanquished, as a stream, less powerful in appear- 

 ance, often captures the neighboring watercourse, more important 

 but ill-protected against an enemy of whose existence it is unaware. 

 The warlike Mongol of the Middle Ages has become a peaceful shep- 

 herd of flocks, and the fierce Manchu invader of the seventeenth 

 century is now but one of the innumerable functionaries who crowd 

 the administrative hierarchy of the Celestial Empire. The evolu- 

 tion of China has hardly commenced as yet; a few isolated reformers 

 can have no real influence upon so vast an empire. Railroads will 

 be the conqueror of China; the steam-engine will carry through the 

 whole empire ideas not French, English, German, nay, nor Japan- 

 ese but new general ideas which will give to the Chinese a charac- 

 teristic individuality. 



After innovations will this great body remain homogenous? 



Homogeneity exists in China by virtue of the centralization of the 

 administration and the common origin of the mandarins, but the 

 points of view of the country and the customs of the races which 

 inhabit it are exceedingly varied ; its different parts are merely placed 

 in juxtaposition; they are not blended into one uniform mass; they 

 are only united by the artificial tie of government. Strip the Chinese 

 of the queue which adorns the back of his head and suppress the 

 shaving of his skull, made compulsory by the victorious Tartar, and 

 one will see the most varied peoples throughout the Empire. The 

 Chinese of Canton and the Chinese of Pe-king vary almost more 

 one from the other than the English and the French; the Lolo of 

 Se-tch'uan is as unlike the Chinaman as a Volga Kalmuk is unlike 

 a Baltic German; the rough mountains of Yun-nan have nothing 

 of the pleasing appearance of the hills of Che-Kiang; the plain of 

 China, practically the valley of the Imperial Canal, does not recall 

 in any manner the uneven country of the Upper Yang-tse. 



What will this evolution be, rendered compulsory by the fall of an 

 obsolete and rotten administration, hastened by the construction 

 of railways, and an obligatory contact with peoples differing in 

 their civilization, in their appearance, in their aspirations? No one 

 can say. 



There is no place in China for the immigration of foreigners who 

 would not certainly seek their livelihood in the sterile parts of the 

 Empire devastated by famine; but privileged or rather favored by 



