239 
said to have bred seven sorts of animals for sacrifice ; and to 
have come from the ivestern districts of the empire, where he 
appeared immediately after that convulsion of the earth just 
described, and where he is attended by seven companions, his 
wife , and his three sons and daughters , by whose intermarriage 
the whole circle of the earth was completed.* * * § 
16. It is almost impossible to read these statements without 
referring them to dim and distorted recollections of the Fall 
of man and paradise, of Noah and the Deluge. As to the 
latter, there is an additional item of most singular ethnic 
evidence, in the hieroglyphical or picture character by which, 
from time immemorial, the Chinese have expressed the word 
“ ship.” Bryant f first brought the circumstance before me ; 
but I have since tested it for myself, and found it perfectly 
correct. The fact is this. The sign for a large ship is com- 
posed of three separate picture characters, all grouped to- 
gether into one; viz. a boat, a mouth , and the number eight ; 
which if read as a sentence would mean, “ eight persons in a 
boat .” How it came to pass that the elementary idea of a 
large first-class vessel should have been thus anciently con- 
nected with eight persons in a boat, I cannot say ; but, as a 
matter of subsidiary, and an increase of cumulative evidence, 
it is certainly not unreasonable to refer it to a traditionary 
remembrance of the time of Noah. 
17. Passing away from China, we find little which throws 
further light on this subject. Among the Mantshu Tartars 
there is a mythological story to the effect that they had 
originally sprung from a woman, who, having come down from 
heaven , had been detained on earth by eating beautiful fruits ; J 
- — a story which may not be without some bearing on a tradi- 
tional remembrance of the Fall. Among the Mongols proper 
I read of the sacrifices of rams, sheep, and lambs a year old; 
while, in their prayers and songs of invocation, the u life ” so 
offered is called a compensation,” and the “ body ” is 
described as “ a gift.” § Among the same people, there is 
also an old mythological story of the first man and woman 
who made the rest of the human race out of paper ; which 
race, while they slept, were all maimed and defiled bv the Evil 
Spirit.H J 
18. I am fully aware that testimonies like these, taken 
* Christ and other Masters, part 3, chap. i. ; and McClatchie, in Asiatic 
Journal of 1856, xvi. pp. 403, 404. 
t Bryant’s Analysis of Mythology, vol. iii. p. 9. 
X See Latham’s Descriptive Ethnology, vol. i. p. 269. 
§ Idem , vol. i. pp. 319-321. || Idem , vol. i. p 322. 
