  The Yellow Race has also been called the Mongol Race, from the well-defined features of one of the families it comprises. The principal characteristics which distinguish the individuals and the families belonging to the Yellow race, are, high cheekbones, a lozenge-shaped head, a small flat nose, a flat countenance, narrow obliquely-set eyes, straight coarse black hair, a scanty beard, and a complexion of a greenish hue. However, all the members of the yellow race do not exhibit these distinct features. Sometimes they show but a few of them, whilst others of their characteristics would seem to identify them with the Caucasian group. It is thus very difficult to make the proper divisions in this race. We will separate it into three branches—the Hyperborean, the Mongolian, and the Sinaic branches. CHAPTER I. | ||||||||||||||
| P. Sellier, p.t | Imp. Dupuy, 22, R. des Petits HÔtels | G. Regamey, lith. |
| MONGOLIAN | ESQUIMAUX |
| YELLOW OR MONGOLIAN RACE | |
We will take a few details about the country of the Yakuts and its inhabitants from the interesting travels of Ouvarouski, republished in the “Tour du Monde.” The land of the Yakuts has two different aspects. To the south of Yakutsk, it is covered
102.—YAKUTS.
The severity of the cold is very great in this country—greater, perhaps, than in any other part of Siberia. Its population is not more than two hundred thousand. The Yakuts (figs. 102 and 103) are stoutly made, though only of middle height. Their countenance is rather flat, and their nose is of a corresponding width. They have either brown or black eyes. Their hair is black, thick, and glossy. They never have any on their faces. Their complexion is between white and black, and changes three or four times a year; in the spring, from the action of the atmosphere; in the summer, from that of the sun; and in winter, from the cold and from the effects of the heat of their fires. They
But let us quote Ouvarouski, the author of the description of the customs of the Yakuts.
“The land of the Yakuts,” says this traveller, “is so extensive that the temperature varies very much. At Olekminsk for instance, wheat thrives capitally, because there the white frost comes late; at Djigansk on the contrary, the earth always remains frozen two spans below the surface, and the snow begins to fall in the month of August.
“The Yakuts are all baptised in the Russian faith, two or three hundred of them perhaps excepted. They obey the ordinances of the church and go annually to confession, but few receive the sacrament, because they are not in the habit of fasting. They neither go out in the morning nor retire to rest at night without saying their devotions. When chance has befriended them, they thank the Lord; when misfortune overtakes them, they regard it as a punishment inflicted by the Almighty for their sins, and, without losing heart, patiently await better times. In spite of these praiseworthy sentiments they still preserve some superstitious beliefs, particularly the custom of prostrating themselves before the devil. When long sicknesses and murrains prevail, they cause their shamans to practise exorcisms and sacrifice cattle of a particular colour.
“The Yakuts are very intelligent. It is sufficient to hold an hour or two’s conversation with one of them to understand his feelings, his disposition, and his mind. They easily comprehend the meaning of elevated language, and guess from the very beginning what is about to follow. Few even of the most artful Russians are able to deceive a Yakut of the woods.
103.—A YAKUT WOMAN.
“They honour their old men, follow their advice, and consider it wrong and unjust to offend and irritate them. When a father has several children, he gets them married one after the other,
“The wealth of a Yakut is estimated in proportion to the number of cattle he possesses; the improvement of his herds is his first thought, his principal wish; he never thinks of putting by money till he has succeeded in this object.
“Anger is acclimatized among all nations; the Yakut is no stranger to it, but he easily forgets the grudge he may owe to any one, provided the latter acknowledges his wrong and confesses himself to blame.
“The Yakuts have other failings, which must not be attributed to an innate bad disposition. Some of them live on stolen cattle, but these are only the needy; when they have taken enough to feed them two or three times from the carcase of the stolen beast, they abandon the rest; this shows that their only motive is hunger, from which they have suffered perhaps for months and years. Besides when the thief is caught, their princes (kinÆs, from the Russian kniaz) have him whipped with rods, according to ancient custom, before everybody. The man who has undergone this punishment carries its degradation with him to the day of his death. His evidence can never be again listened to, and his words are of no weight in the assemblies where the people meet to deliberate. He can be chosen neither as prince nor as starsyna (from the Russian starchina, ancient). These customs prove that theft has not become a profession among the Yakuts. The thief is not only punished, but never regains the name of an honest man.
“Let a Yakut once determine to master some handicraft, and he is sure to succeed. He is at one and the same time a jeweller, a tinker, a farrier, and a carpenter; he knows how to take a gun to pieces, how to carve bone, and, with a little practice, he can imitate any work of art he has once examined. It is a pity that they have no instruction to teach them the higher arts, for they are quite capable of executing extraordinary tasks.
“They are wonderful shots. Neither cold nor rain, neither hunger nor fatigue, can stop them in the pursuit of a bird or an animal. They will follow a fox or a hare for two entire days without minding their own fatigue, or the exhaustion of their horse.
“They have a good deal of taste and inclination for trade, and
“The gun-stocks that they manufacture, the combs they cut and ornament, are works of great finish. I may also remark that their oxhide leather bottles never get foul, even if they are left for ten years full of liquid.
“Many of the Yakut women have pretty faces; they are cleaner than the men, and like the rest of their sex are fond of dress and fine things. Nature has not left them without charms. They cannot be called bad, immoral, or light women. They pay the same honour to their father and mother, and to the aged parents of their husband, as they do to the Deity. Their head and their feet they never allow to be seen stripped. They never pass the right side of the hearth, and never call their husbands’ relations by their Yakut names. The woman who is unlike this description is looked upon as a wild beast, and her husband is considered extremely unlucky.”
Fig. 104 represents a Yakut village and villagers.
The Yakuts profess Shamanism, an idolatrous religion practised by the Finns, by the Samoiedes, by the Ostiaks, by the BurÏats, by the Teleouts, by the Tunguses, and by the inhabitants of the Pacific islands. Shamanists worship a supreme being, the creator of the world, but indifferent to human actions. Under him are male and female gods: some good, who superintend the government of the world, and the destinies of humanity; the others evil, the greatest of whom (ChaÏtan, Satan) is considered to be nearly as powerful as the supreme Being. Religious veneration is also paid to their ancestors, to heroes, and to their priests, called Shamans; these latter in their ceremonies practise a great deal of sorcery.
Fig. 105 represents some of these Shamans.
The Turkish Family.
The people belonging to the Turk or Tartar family succeeded in founding, in very ancient times, a vast empire which included a part of central Asia from China up to the Caspian Sea. But the Turks, attacked and conquered by the Mongols, were subdued and driven back towards the south-west, that is to say to the south of Europe. There they became in their turn
104.—YAKUT VILLAGERS.
The Turks had originally red hair, greenish-grey eyes, and a Mongolian cast of countenance. But these characteristics have
105.—YAKUT PRIESTS.
The Turkish family comprises rather a large number of races. We shall consider here only the Turcomans, the Kirghis, the Nogays, and the Osmanlis.
The Turcomans.—The Turcomans wander in the steppes of Turkestan, Persia, and Afghanistan. They stray as far as Anatolia to the west. The tribes who dwell in this last district have the shape and the physical characteristics of the White Race; those who inhabit Turkestan show in their physiognomy the admixture of Mongol blood.
The Turcoman is above the middle height. He has not strongly developed muscles, but he is tolerably powerful and enjoys a robust constitution. His skin is white; his countenance is round; his cheek bones are prominent; his forehead is wide, and the development of the bony part of the skull forms a kind of crest at the top of the head. His almond-shaped and nearly lidless eye is small, lively, and intelligent. His nose is usually insignificant and turned up. The lower part of his face retreats a little, and his lips are thick. He has scanty moustachios and beard, and his ears are large and protruding.
The Turcoman’s dress consists of wide trousers falling over the foot and tight at the hips, and of a collarless shirt open at the right side down to the waist, falling, outside the trousers, halfway down the thigh. Outside these an ample coat is fastened round the waist by a cotton or wool belt. It is open in front and slightly crossed over the chest. Its sleeves are very long and very wide, a little skull-cap is worn instead of the hair, and is covered with a kind of head-dress called talbac, made of sheep skin, in the shape of a cone with a slightly depressed summit. His shoes are a sort of slipper, or simply a sandal of camel or horse skin fastened to the foot by a woollen cord.
The type is more strongly defined in the Turcoman women than in the men. Their cheek bones are more prominent, and their complexion is white. Their hair is generally thick but very short; and they are obliged to lengthen their tresses with
We will not describe their dress, but will only observe that they wear a round cap on their head, to which they fasten a silk or cotton veil falling backwards. The whole is surrounded by a kind of turban of the breadth of three fingers, on which are some little squares of silver. One end of the veil is brought under the chin from right to left, and is fastened, by a little silver chain ending in a hook, on the left side of the face.
Trinkets, necklaces, bracelets, and chains play such a prominent part in the adornment of the Turcoman women, that a dozen of them together drawing water make as much tinkling as the ringing of a small bell.
The men wear no ornament.
Fig. 106 represents a camp of nomadic Turcomans.
M. de Blocqueville, who published in 1866, in the “Tour du Monde,” the curious account entitled “Fourteen months’ captivity among the Turcomans,” describes as follows the habits of these tribes:—
“The Turcomans keep close to their tent a sheep or a goat, which they fatten and kill on special occasions. The bones are taken out and the meat is cut up and salted; some of it is dried and acquires a high flavour much liked by the Turcomans; the rest, cut into smaller pieces and placed in the animal’s paunch, is kept to make soup out of. They collect the bones and other leavings, and stew them down in a pan so as to have some broth to offer on festival occasions to their friends and neighbours. The intestines fall to the children’s share, who broil them on the coals and spend whole days in sucking and pulling about this half-cleansed offal.
106.—TURCOMAN ENCAMPMENT.
“...... Women are treated with more consideration by the Turcomans than by other Mussulmans. But they work hard, and every day have to grind the corn for the family food. Besides this, they spin silk, wool, and cotton; they weave, sew, mill felt, pitch and strike the tents, draw water, sometimes do some washing, dye woollen and silk stuffs, and manufacture the carpets. They set up out of doors, in the fine weather, a very primitive loom made of four stakes firmly fixed in the ground, and, with the assistance of two large cross pieces on which they lay the woof, begin the weaving, which is done with an iron implement composed
“In their rare intervals of leisure they have always got with them a packet, of wool or of camel’s hair, or some raw silk, that they spin whilst they are gossiping or visiting their neighbours; for they never remain quite idle like the women of some Mussulman countries.
“The man has also his own kind of work; he tills the soil, tends the crops, gets in the harvest, takes care of the domestic animals, and sometimes starts on plundering expeditions in order to bring home some booty. He manufactures hand-made woollen rope; cuts out and stitches together the harness and clothing of his horses and camels; attempts to do a little trade, and in his leisure moments makes himself caps and shoes, plays on the doutar (an instrument with two strings), sings, drinks tea, and smokes.
“These tribes are very fond of improving themselves, and of reading the few books that chance throws into their hands.
“As a rule the children do not work before their tenth or twelfth year. Their parents up to that age make them learn to read and write. Those who are obliged to avail themselves of their children’s assistance during the press of summer labour, take care that they make up for lost time in the winter.
“The schoolmaster, mollah (priest or man of letters), is content to be remunerated either in kind, with wheat, fruit or onions; or in money, according to the parents’ position. Each child possesses a small board, on which the mollah writes down the alphabet or whatever happens to be the task; this is washed off as soon as the child has learned his lesson.
“The parents satisfy themselves that their children know their lessons before they set out for school: the women in particular are vain of being able to read. The men sometimes spend whole days in trying to understand books of poetry which come from Khiva or Boukhara, where the dialect is a little different to their own.
“The Turcoman mollahs spend some years in these towns to enable themselves to study in the best schools.
“All these tribes are Mahometan and belong to the Sunnite sect. The only external difference between them and the
“Whilst at their prayers, they keep their arms crossed in front of them from the wrist upwards only, instead of keeping them by their side like the Persians.
“Although they follow pretty regularly the precepts of their religion, they show less fanaticism and ostentatious bigotry than most other Easterns whom I have seen. For instance, they will consent to smoke and eat with Jews.
“Every Turcoman has an affection for his tribe, and will devote himself, if need be, for the common weal. Their proper and dignified manners are far beyond a comparison with those of their neighbours—even the inhabitants of Boukhara and Khiva, whose morals have become corrupted to a painful degree. I have seldom seen quarrels and disturbances amongst the Turcomans. Sometimes I have been present at very lively and animated discussions, but I never heard any low abuse or bad language as in other countries. They are less harsh towards their women, and show them more consideration and respect than do the Persians.
“When strangers are present, the women pass an end of their veil under their chin and speak in a low voice, but they are saluted and respected by the visitors, and enter into conversation with them without any harm being thought of it.
“A woman can go from one tribe to another, or make a journey along an unfrequented road, without having to fear the least insult from any one.
“When a Turcoman pays a visit he makes his appearance in one invariable manner. He lifts the door of the tent, bowing as he enters, then comes to a stop and draws himself up to his full height: after a pause of a few seconds, during which he keeps his eyes fixed on the dome of the tent, probably to give the women time to cover their chins, he quietly pronounces his salutation without making the slightest gesture. After exchanging civilities and inquiries about the health of relations and friends, the master of the tent begs the visitor to take a seat on the carpet beside him. The wife then offers him a napkin with a little bread, or bread and water, or some sour milk, or a little fruit. The stranger discreetly only takes a few mouthfuls of what is offered to him.”
107.—KIRGHIS FUNERAL RITES.
The Kirghis.—The Kirghis (fig. 107) are a nomadic tribe. They inhabit the tract of country situated on the frontiers of the Russian and Chinese empires. They wander to and fro on wide spreading plains from lake Baikal to the borders of the Siberian steppes.
They travel armed, and always prepared, either for war or for the chase. As wild beasts attack men when by themselves, they nearly always travel on horseback in troops.
For the matter of that, the Kirghis never get off their horses. All business is settled, and all merchandise is bought and sold, on horseback. There is in a town, by name ShouraÏahan, where the sedentary Kirghis reside, a market-place where buyers and sellers do all their business without leaving the saddle. The Kirghis are much below the middle height. Their countenances are ugly. Having scarcely any bridge to their nose, the space between their eyes is flat and quite on a level with the rest of their face. Their eyes are long and half closed, the forehead protrudes at the lower part, and retreats at the top. Their big puffy cheeks look like two pieces of raw flesh stuck on the sides of their face. They have but little beard, their body is not at all muscular, and their complexion is a dark brown.
The Kirghis are something like the Uzbeks, a race whom we can only just mention, but the latter, living in a temperate climate, are tall and well made, while the former, under the influence of a rigorous one, are short and stunted.
Both these people possess a certain kind of civilization in spite of their nomadic habits. In the districts in which they are in the custom of travelling, they have established relays of horses, a very necessary adjunct to their mode of life.
The Nogays.—The Nogays, who once constituted a powerful nation on the shores of the Black Sea, are now scattered among other peoples. Many of them still wander in nomadic tribes, on the steppes between the banks of the Volga and the Caucasian mountains. Others who have settled down are tillers of the soil or artisans. Such are those to be met with in the Crimea or in Astracan. M. Vereschaguine came across some Nogays on the Caucasian steppes. This Russian traveller says that they are peaceful and laborious, and more capable of becoming attached to
The Osmanlis.—The most important members of the Turkish family are now the Osmanlis. The Osmanlis were the founders of the Turkish Empire and the conquerors of Constantinople.
A tendency to a nomadic mode of life is a strong instinct with this race. It degenerated as soon as it settled down anywhere, and this perhaps is the cause of the decline of the Turkish nation, which at present inhabits south-eastern Europe and Asia Minor.
The residence in Europe and the civilization of the Osmanli Turks date from the Hegira of Mahomet in the seventh century after Christ.
Physically speaking, their outlines would seem to ally them to the Caucasian race. This was the reason that they were so long classified among the White or Caucasian race; but most modern anthropologists place them in the Yellow Race.
The head of the Osmanli Turks is nearly round. The forehead is high and broad: the nose is straight, without any depression at its bridge or widening at the nostrils.
The Turkish head does not resemble the European head. It has a peculiar abrupt elevation of the occiput. Its proportions, however, are very good. Mongol descent can be traced in its shape, but scarcely in a perceptible manner, if the features of the face alone are to be taken into account.
The Turks, in general, are tall, well made, robust men, with a rough but often noble physiognomy, a slightly tawny complexion, and brown or black hair. Their carriage is dignified, and their natural gravity is still further increased by the ample folds of their dress, by their beard, by their moustachios, and by that imposing head-dress, the turban. They are the most recent of all the races of Asian descent who have become Europeanized, and they still preserve, especially in Turkey in Asia, the habits, the costumes, and the belief that distinguished them three centuries ago.
Now, as then, the Turks, like Easterns in general, restrict themselves to a frugal and principally vegetable diet. They drink no wine. Bodily exercises, such as riding on horseback and the use of arms, develop their strength. Their hospitality is dignified and ceremonious. They are small talkers, are much
Such is Turkish life among the higher classes. The common people and the labourers have none of these refinements of existence. Yet the lower classes are less unhappy in Turkey, and in the East in general, than are those of European nations. Eastern hospitality is not an empty word. A wealthy Mussulman never sends empty away the wretched who seek his assistance. Besides, it takes so little to support these temperate healthy people, and the earth so plentifully supplies vegetable produce in the East, that poor people can always find food and a roof to cover them. The Caravanserai are public inns where travellers and workmen are lodged for nothing; and the hospitality shown to the unfortunate wayfarer by the country land-owners is really patriarchal.
Polygamy is less in vogue in Turkey and in the East than is supposed. A Turkish woman being a very expensive luxury, that is to say, being in the habit of doing nothing and of spending a great deal, it is only very rich Mussulmans that can allow themselves the pleasure of supporting more than one wife. Sometimes, indeed, the bride’s parents insert a clause in the marriage contract, by which the husband gives up his right as a Mahometan to possess four wives.
Besides their legitimate wives, the wealthy and the great keep a collection of Georgian and Circassian slaves in the lonely sets of rooms, closed by Eastern jealousy to all prying eyes, which are called harems and not seraglios. It is only within these isolated apartments that Turkish women, whether wives or concubines, allow their faces and arms to be seen. Out of doors they are always wrapped up in a triple set of veils, which conceal their features from the keenest eye.
Mahomet permitted women to abstain from taking part in public prayer in the mosques. It is therefore only in the interior of the harem that any gathering of Mussulman women can take place. It is there, too, that they give one another parties and entertainments.
108.—A HAREM.
An erroneous impression of the Turkish woman’s position is prevalent in Europe. Many European women would be glad to exchange their lot in life and their liberty for the supposed slavery of the Turkish women. Of course we are only alluding
The Turkish lady is born to total and complete idleness. A young girl who, at fourteen years of age, can not only sew fairly, but can actually read, is considered a very well educated person. If she can also write, and is acquainted with the first one or two rules of arithmetic, she is quite learned. The woman of the middle classes never condescends to trade, she is always idle. Even the poor woman rarely works, and then only when it suits her.
The Turkish woman then, to whatever class she may happen to belong, is a votary of the far niente. To drive away ennui, the wealthier make or receive visits or frequent parties. In the harems of the rich, each lady receives her friends in her own room. There they talk, sing, or tell one another stories. They listen to music, they go to pantomimes, to dances, and walk in the gardens. They pass the long hours agreeably by taking baths together, by swinging in hammocks, by smoking the narguilhÉ, and by giving elegant little dinner parties.
An evening party in a harem (la Kalva) is rather a rare occurrence, for night festivities are not among Mussulman habits. No man is present at these parties. As the guests arrive, the lady of the house begs them to be seated, and places them side by side on a divan with their legs crossed under them, or leaning on one knee. Coffee and a tchibouk with an amber mouthpiece are handed round. Small portions of fruit jelly are served on a silver embossed dish. Each guest, after a little ceremonious hesitation, helps herself with the only spoon in the dish, and which everybody uses. Each then puts her lips to a large tumbler of water which follows the jelly.
General and animated conversation then begins. The maids of the lady of the house seat themselves so that every one can see them, and begin to sing, accompanying themselves on the harp, on the mandolin, on little kettledrums, or on tambourines. Afterwards other young girls go through a kind of pantomimic dance. When the music and the dances are over, they play games of cards, and the party winds up with a supper (fig. 109).
Pleasure out of doors has other attractions. The Turkish ladies of the middle class frequent the bazaars and pay one another visits.
There are three kinds of these visits: visits that have been announced beforehand, unexpected visits, and chance visits. The last are the most curious. Several ladies collect together and go about in the different quarters of the town, paying visits to people whom they have never seen (fig. 110).
109.—A HAREM SUPPER.
Walking parties in Constantinople are regular picnics. On Sundays and Fridays people leave town provided with all sorts of refreshments. The sultans have constructed on some of the public walks overhanging terraces, which overlook pieces of water
The Turk may be lazy, but he is not at all unsociable, and many of his characteristics indicate a great deal of gentleness. Like the Indians and the ancient Egyptians, the Turks, and Easterns in general, have a great repugnance to the killing of animals. Dogs and cats abound and swarm in the streets of the large towns, but no measures are ever taken to prevent the multiplication and the running wild of these animals. In Constantinople flocks of pigeons fly hither and thither and levy, on the barges laden with wheat, a species of black mail that no one disputes with them. The banks of the canals are thickly peopled with aquatic animals, and their nests are safe even from the hands of children, in our country such cruel enemies to their broods. This forbearance is extended even to trees. If it is true that in China the law requires every land owner who fells a tree to plant one in its stead in another spot, it is equally true in Turkey that custom forbids an avaricious land owner from depriving either town or country of useful and wholesome shade. The wealthy townsmen make it a point of honour to embellish the public promenades with fountains and with resting places, both of which, on account of the frequency of ablutions and of prayers required by the Mahometan religion, are indispensable. Those who can only perceive in the Turkish nation coarseness, ignorance, and ferocity, have been deceived by the pride natural to a Mussulman, which is made the more offensive by his silent and sometimes abrupt manners; but the basis of the Mussulman character contains nothing to offend. The Turks are only what it is possible for them to be with their lamentable institutions and their faulty laws.
110.—TURKISH LADIES VISITING.
Their law we know is simply despotism, which is carried out from the sultan down to the lowest official, unchecked by any guarantee of equity or of justice to individuals. The sultan (padishah, meaning great lord) appoints and dismisses at pleasure every dignitary and every official: he is the master of their fortunes and of their life. But anarchy is rife in the
The pachas are the governors of the provinces. Their rank is reckoned by the number of their standards or tails. They unite under one head the military and civil power, and by a still greater abuse, they are deputed to collect the taxes. They would be absolute sultans in their own provinces if the law did not leave the judicial authority in the hands of the cadis and the naÏbs.
A pacha with three tails has, like the sultan, the power of life and death over all the agents he employs, and even over all who threaten public safety. He keeps up a military force, and marches at their head when called on by the sultan. A pacha has under his orders several beys, or lieutenant-governors.
The interior organization of Turkey may be described as a military despotism. The Turkish nation continues to administer its conquest as if it were a country taken by assault; it leads the life of an army encamped in the midst of a conquered state. Everybody and everything is the property of the sultan. Christians, Jews, and Armenians are merely the slaves of the victorious Ottoman. The sultan graciously allows them to live, but even this concession they are obliged to purchase by paying a tribute, the receipt for which bears these words: “In purchase of the head.”
The same principle is carried out in regard to land. The Turks have no proprietary rights; they merely enjoy the usufruct of their possessions. When they die without leaving a male child, the sultan inherits their property. Sons can only claim a tenth part of their paternal inheritance, and the fiscal officials are ordered to put an arbitrary value on this tenth part. The officers of the State do not even enjoy this incomplete right; at their death everything reverts to the sultan.
Under such laws, it is not to be wondered at if nobody cares to undertake expensive and lasting works. Instead of building, people collect jewels and wealth easy to carry off or to conceal.
The sultan, like a man embarrassed with such an abuse of power, shifts the cares of government on to the shoulders of the grand vizier.
The grand vizier is the lieutenant of the sultan. He is the commander-in-chief of the army, he manages the finances, and fills up all civil and military appointments.
But if the power of the grand vizier is limitless, his responsibility and the dangers he incurs are equally great. He must answer for all the State’s misfortunes and for all public calamities. The sword is always suspended over his head. Surrounded by snares, exposed to all the tricks of hatred and envy, he pays with the price of his life the misfortune of having displeased either the populace or the highest officials. The grand vizier has to govern the country, with the assistance of a state council (divan) composed of the principal ministers. The reiss effendi is the high chancellor of the empire, and the head of the corporation of the kodja, or men of letters. This corporation, which has managed to acquire a great political influence, contains at the present time some of the best informed men of the nation. The duty of watching over the preservation of the fundamental laws of the empire is entrusted to the ulema, or corporation of theological and legal doctors.
These laws are very short: they consist only of the Koran, and of the commentaries on the Koran drawn up by ancient pundits. The members of this corporation bear the title of ulemas, or effendis. They unite judicial to religious authority; they are at the same time the interpreters of religion, and the judges in all civil and criminal matters.
The mufti is the supreme head of the ulema. He is the head of the church. He represents the sultan’s vicar, as caliph or successor to Mahomet. The sultan can promulgate no law, make no declaration of war, institute no tax, without having obtained a fetfa, or approval from the mufti.
The mufti presents every year to the sultan the candidates for the leading judicial magistracies; these candidates are chosen from the members of the ulema. The post of mufti would be an excellent counterpoise to the authority of the sultan, if the latter had it not in his power to dismiss the mufti, to send him into exile, and even to condemn him to death.
The foregoing political and judicial organization seems at first
Yet Turkey possesses a kind of system of popular representation. The inhabitants of Constantinople elect ayams, real delegates of the people, whose business it is to watch over the safety and the property of individuals, the tranquillity of the town, to oppose the unjust demands of the pachas, the excesses of the military, and the unfair collection of taxes. These duties are gratuitously performed by the most trustworthy men among the inhabitants. The ayams undertake all appeals to the pacha, when there exist any just grounds of complaint, and if he does not satisfy them, they carry their appeal to the sultan.
Every trade and handicraft in Turkey possesses a kind of guild or corporation which undertakes to defend the rights of the association and of its individual members. The humblest artisan is protected in all legal matters by this corporation. It is unnecessary to say that the corporation enforces its rights before the judges by pecuniary means.
111.—A TURKISH BARBER.
It is a great mistake to imagine that the Mussulman religion predominates in Turkey. In Turkey in Europe, not more than a quarter of the population profess the creed of Mahomet. The remainder are Christians, subdivided into the leading sects of that faith. The Greeks, the Servians, the Walachians, and the
All these brotherhoods, excepting the Druzes and the Maronites, were formerly deprived of the free right of worship, were liable to marks of ignominy, and were handed over, defenceless, to injustice. But in the beginning of our century, an edict of the sultan declared all his subjects, regardless of their religion, equal in the eyes of the law.
Mahometanism, which prevails in Turkey, and in the greater portion of the East, dates from the 610th year of our era. Its principal doctrines are purification, prayer, and fasting. The fasting takes place in the month of Ramazan, a month which is the Mussulman’s Lent, and during which all food must be abstained from in the daytime. It is followed by the festival of Beyram, during which the faithful are allowed to make up for their preceding abstinence. A legal charity is instituted by their creed. It consists in giving every year to the poor a fortieth part of their movable property. Another religious injunction is the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every Mussulman is obliged to undertake at least once in his lifetime.
Their devotions take place five times a day. Friday is the day of rest for the Mahometans, as Sunday is that of the Christians, and Saturday that of the Jews.
Mahometanism has inherited from the ancient Arabs the practice of circumcision. Mussulmans are forbidden to drink intoxicating drinks, but are allowed to marry four wives, and to make concubines of their female slaves. Their religion deprives them of all liberty of will, as it tells them that everything that can happen, either for evil or for good, is settled beforehand. It is this fatalism that paralyzes all individual enterprise, and prevents the march of progress.
Mahometanism has not been more exempt than other creeds from schisms, which have brought to pass religious wars always so terrible in their consequences.
Its precepts, which have their advantages from a religious point of view, have many disastrous consequences when we regard mankind’s physical constitution. The interdict on the use of wine,
112.—TURKISH PORTER.
The Turks, although their literary civilization is still in its infancy, possess a system of public education. The mosques of
But in Turkey, what knowledge there is, remains absorbed among a small quantity of individuals; no channel exists for the free intercommunication of ideas.
Their kodjas, or writers, have indeed given their fellow countrymen a large number of works, much esteemed by them—works on the Arabic and Persian languages, on philosophy, on morality, on Mussulman history, and on the geography of their country. But these writings, whatever their value, never reach the mass of the nation. There are but few printing presses in Turkey; the copyist’s art, such as it existed in Europe in the middle ages, still flourishes there. The state of literature in Turkey shows us what modern civilization would have become in Europe, without the assistance of the printer.
With this general want of literary and scientific knowledge, we naturally expect to find Turkey far behindhand in art, in manufactures, and in agriculture. The latter, in fact, is in a sad state throughout the whole extent of the Ottoman empire. Manufactures exist in a few towns; in Constantinople, in Salonica, in Adrianople, and in Rustchuk. Their principal manufactures are carpets, morocco leather, a little silk, thread and swords. Their commerce consists in the export of their raw produce; such as wool, silk, cotton, leather, tobacco, and metals, particularly copper; wine, oil, and dried fruit are also largely exported. The Turks are good cloth manufacturers, gunsmiths, and tanners. Their works in steel and copper, and their dyes, are equal to the best articles of European manufacture.
The Greeks, who are very numerous in Turkey, follow all kinds of trades and callings. They make the best sailors of the Ottoman empire, while the Armenians are its keenest traders. The latter travel all over the interior of Asia and India; they have branch establishments and correspondents everywhere. Most of
Figs. 111 and 112 represent two common Turkish types—a barber and a street porter.
CHAPTER III.
SINAIC BRANCH.
The nations belonging to the Sinaic branch (from the Latin SinÆ, Chinese) have not the features of the Yellow Race so well defined as those belonging to the Mongolian branch. Their nose is less flattened, their figures are better, and they are taller. They early acquired rather a high degree of civilization, but they have since remained stationary, and their culture, formerly one of the most advanced in the world, is now very second rate compared to the progress made by the inhabitants of Europe and America. Chemical and mechanical arts were early practised and carried
113.—INDO-CHINESE OF STUNG TRENG.
The Sinaic branch comprises the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Indo-Chinese families.
114.—INDO-CHINESE OF LAOS.
The Chinese Family.
The Chinese, amongst whom, out of all the Yellow Race, civilization was the first to develop itself, have the following characteristic features. Width and flatness in the subocular part of the face, prominent cheek bones, and obliquely set eyes. Their features as a whole partake of the type of the Mongol race: that is to say, they have a broad coarse face, high cheek bones, heavy jaws, a flat bridge to their nose, wide nostrils, obliquely set eyes, straight and plentiful hair, of a brownish black colour with a red tint in it, thick eyebrows, scanty beards, and a yellowish red complexion.
They constitute the principal population of the vast empire of China, and extend even further. Many have settled in Indo-China, in the islands of the Straits, and in the Philippine islands. China in four thousand years has been governed by twenty-eight dynasties. The emperor is merely an ornamental wheel in the mechanism of the Chinese government, the councillors possessing the real power. Centralization plays a powerful part in the administrative organization of the country. The emperor’s authority is founded on a secular and patriarchal respect, boundless in its influence. Veneration for old age is a law of the state. Infirm old men, too poor to hire litters, are often seen in the streets of Pekin, seated in little hand carriages, dragged about by their grandchildren. As they pass, the young people about receive them respectfully, and leave off for the moment their play or their work. The government encourages these feelings by giving yellow dresses to very old men. This is the highest mark of distinction a private individual can receive, for yellow is the colour reserved for the members of the imperial family.
Their respect for their ancestors is also carried very far by the
115.—A YOUNG CHINESE.
There are many different creeds in China. The Buddhist faith, so widely spread in Asia, is the most general; but the higher
116.—CHINESE SHOPKEEPER.
The Buddhist priests are called Bonzes.
117.—CHINESE LADY.
The position of women is in China a humble one. She is considered inferior to man, and her birth is often regarded as a misfortune. The young girl lives shut up in her father’s house,
The wealthy Chinese shut their wives up in the women’s apartments. When their lords and masters allow them to pay one another visits, or to go and see their parents, they go out in hermetically closed litters. They live in a wing of the building, reserved for their use, where no one can see them.
118.—CHINESE WOMAN.
It is otherwise amongst the poorer classes. The women go out of doors with their face uncovered; but they pay dearly for this privilege, for they are nothing but the beasts of burden of their husbands. They age very rapidly.
Polygamy exists in China, but only on sufferance. A man of rank may have several wives, but the first one only is the legitimate one. Widows are not allowed to remarry. Betrothals often take place before the future husband and wife have reached the
119.—MANDARIN’S DAUGHTER.
A marriage ceremony at Pekin takes place as follows. The bride goes in great state to the dwelling of the bridegroom, who
The Tartar and Chinese ladies composing the court of the Empress, as well as the wives of the officials residing in the capital, do nothing to distort their feet, except to wear the theatrical buskin, in which it is very difficult to walk. But a Chinese woman of good middle class family would think herself disgraced, and would have a difficulty in getting a husband, unless she had crippled her feet. This is what is done to give them a pleasing appearance. The feet of little girls of six years of age are tightly compressed with oiled bandages; the big toe is bent under the other four, which are themselves folded down under the sole of the foot. These bandages are drawn tighter every month. When the girl has grown up, her foot presents the appearance of a closed fist. Women with their feet mutilated in this manner walk with great difficulty. They move about with a kind of skip, stretching out their arms to keep their equilibrium.
Another of their conventional points of beauty is to wear their finger-nails very long. For fear of breaking them they cover them with little silver sheaths, which they also use as ear-picks.
A quantity of toilet accessories gives a peculiar appearance to the costume of the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire. Fans, parasols, pipes, snuff-boxes, tobacco-pouches, spectacle cases, and purses, are all hung at the girdle by silken strings. The use of the fan is common to both sexes, of all classes.
The kang, at once a bed, a sofa, and a chair; some mats stretched upon the floor; and a few chairs or stools with cushions on them, are to be found in every room of a Chinese house. The interior of these dwellings is a true citadel of sloth. The Chinaman
To give a more exact idea of domestic Chinese life, we will give a few extracts from the interesting travels of M. de Bourboulon, a French consul in China, travels edited by M. Poussielgue, and published in the “Tour du Monde” in 1864.
“A Chinese palace,” says M. Poussielgue, “is thus laid out: more than half the site is taken up with alleys, courts, and gardens crowded with rock-work, rustic bridges, fishponds full of gold fish, aviaries stocked with peacocks, golden pheasants, and partridges from Pe-tche-li, and especially a quantity of painted and varnished porcelain and earthenware jars, containing miniature trees, vines, jessamines, creepers and flowers of all kinds. The principal room on the ground floor opens on to the garden; a piece of open trellis work separates it from the sleeping apartment. The ground floor also comprises the dining-room, the kitchen, and sometimes a bath-room. When there is a second story, called leou, it contains beds and lumber rooms. The entrance-hall is invariably sacred to the ancestors and to the guardian spirits of the family. In every room the kang, which serves as a bed, a sofa, or a chair; and thick mats, laid upon the floor, are to be met with. The actual furniture is scanty; a few chairs and stools made of hard wood, with cushions placed on them; a small table in red lacquer work; an incense burner; some gilt or enamelled bronze candlesticks; flower stands and baskets of flowers; some pictures drawn on rice paper; and finally the inevitable tablet inscribed with some moral apothegm, or a dedication to the ancestors of the master of the house. There are no regular windows; a few square openings, pierced in the side wall where the rooms open on a court or garden, or inserted beneath the double beams supporting the roof where the apartment might be overlooked from the street or from the neighbouring houses, allow a dim light to penetrate through the cross laths of their wooden lattices which serve as fixed blinds to them (figs. 120 and 121).
“The wealthy, abandoning themselves to a luxurious idleness, spend half their existence in these secluded chambers; it is almost impossible for a European to procure admittance to them, for communicative as the Chinese are in business, at festivals, or
120.—CHINESE BOUDOIR.
“Physical idleness is carried to an enormous extent in China; it is considered ill bred to take walks, and to use the limbs. Nothing surprises the natives more than the perpetual craving for exercise that characterizes Europeans. Squatted on their hams, they light their pipe, toy with their fans, and jeer at the European passers-by, whose firm measured footsteps carry them up and down the street. It is necessary to make excuses for coming neither on horseback nor in a palanquin, when paying an official visit, for to do so on foot is a sign of but little respect for the person visited.
“The palanquin is in constant use. Large depÔts of these,
“The rage for gambling is one of the curses of China; a curse that has begotten a thousand others, in all ranks and at all ages. One meets in the streets of Peking a quantity of little itinerant gaming stalls; sometimes consisting of a set of dice in a brass cup on a stand, sometimes a lottery of little sticks marked with numbers, shaken up by the croupier in a tin tube. We saw crowds round these sharpers, and the passing workman, yielding to the irresistible temptation, loses in an hour his day’s hard earnings. The coolies attached to the French army used to thus lose their month’s pay the day after they got it; some of them having pledged their clothes to the croupiers, who do a little pawnbroking into the bargain, had to make their escape amid the jeers of the mob, and used to return to camp with nothing on but a pair of drawers.
“Cock and quail fighting are still practised as an excuse for gambling by the Chinese, who stake large sums on the result. The wealthy and the mercantile classes are just as inveterate gamesters as the common people; they collect in the tea-houses and spend day and night in playing at cards, at dice, at dominos, and at draughts. Their cards, about five inches long, are very narrow, and are a good deal like ours, with figures and pips of different colours marked on them. The game most in vogue seems to be a kind of cribbage. Their draughtsmen are square, and the divisions of the board are round. Their dominos are flat, with red and blue marks. They play at draughts also with dice, a sort of backgammon. Professional gamblers prefer dice to any other game, as it is the most gambling of all. When they have lost all their money, they stake their fields, their house, their children, their wives, and, as a last resort, themselves when they have nothing else left, and their antagonist agrees to let them make such a final stake. A shopkeeper of Tien-tsin, who was minus two fingers of his left hand, had lost them over the dice
“Gambling, which paralyzes labour, is one of the permanent causes of their pauperism, but there is another, still more disastrous—dissipation. The thin varnish of decency and restraint with which Chinese society is covered, conceals a widespread corruption. Public morality is only a mask worn above a deep depravity surpassing all that is told in ancient history, all that is known of the dissipated habits of the Persians and Hindoos of our own day.
“Drunkenness, as understood in Europe, is one of the least of their vices. The use of grape wine was forbidden, centuries ago, by some of their emperors, who tore up all the vine trees in China. This interdiction having been taken off under the ManchÚ dynasty, grapes are grown for the use of the table, but the only wine that is drunk is rice wine or samchow. A spirit as strong as our brandy is extracted from this as well as from coarse millet seed. It induces a terrible form of intoxication. The abuse of it by our soldiers in the Chinese campaign caused a great deal of fatal dysentery in the army.
“The tea-houses also sell alcoholic liquor, but the eating-houses and the taverns drive the largest trade in it.
“We cannot speak of the process of the manufacture of tea, nor of the vast amount of labour it employs: the subject properly belongs to southern China; we will only say that the use of tea is as common in the north as in the south. The moment you enter a house, tea is offered to you—it is a sign of hospitality to do so. It is given to you in profusion; the moment your cup is empty, a silent attendant fills it, and your host will not permit you to mention the subject of your visit till you have drunk a certain quantity. The tea-houses are as numerous as cafÉs and taverns in France; the elegant manner in which they are furnished, and their high charges, distinguish some from others. The rich trader and the idle man of fashion, not caring to mix with the grimy handed workman or the coarse peasant,
“One day,” says a letter of M. X., a French officer in the 101st Regiment of the Line, “we determined to dine À la chinoise in a Chinese eating-house. Our coolies arranged beforehand that the price was to be two piastres a head, a large sum for this country, where provisions are so cheap. As a preparation for dinner, we had to thread our way through a labyrinth of lanes, crowded with dens in which crouched thousands of ragged beggars, poisoning the atmosphere with their exhalations. At the entrance to the open space in front of the eating-house stood a quantity of heaps of refuse, composed of old vegetable stalks, rotten sausages, and dead cats and dogs, and in every hole and corner a mass of filth as disagreeable to the nose as to the eye. It required a strong stomach to retain an appetite after running the gauntlet of such a horrible mess. A few tea drinkers and card players were seated at the door, and seemed to care very little for the pestilential character of the neighbourhood. We tried to be equally courageous, and after admiring two immense lanterns which adorned the entrance, and the sign inscribed in big letters, ‘The three principal Virtues,’ we ventured to hope that honesty would prove one of them, and that the tavern keeper would give us our money’s worth.
“Our entry into the principal room created a little excitement, for, accustomed as the Chinese are to see us, we still, in the quarters of the town where Europeans seldom venture, cause a
121.—CHINESE SITTING-ROOM.
“Satiated rather than satisfied, we should have preferred some more Chinese dishes; some swallows’ nests, or a stew of ging-seng roots, but it appears that such delicacies as these must be ordered for days beforehand, and paid for by their weight in gold. We swallowed a glass of tafia, a liquor which is becoming quite fashionable in Chinese eating-houses, and lighting our cigars looked about us. The day was drawing to a close; the tavern rooms, which were at first nearly empty, were filling with customers, who after furtively scanning us, betook themselves to their usual
“The room was beginning to reek with a nauseous odour, in which we recognised the smell of opium smoke. It was the hour for that fatal infatuation. Smokers with sallow complexions and hollow eyes, began to disappear mysteriously into some closets at the end of the room. We could see them lying down on mat beddings, with hard horsehair pillows.”
Fig. 122 shows one of these closets kept for the use of opium-smokers. The utensils and paraphernalia necessary for the preparation and lighting of the opium pipe, lie on the table.
Agriculture has in China reached a remarkable degree of perfection. It is the great source of the wealth of the country; it is the progress it has attained that allows the Celestial Empire to support such an immense population in a relatively confined area. The profession of agriculturist is consequently held in great respect. We will quote M. Poussielgue on the subject:
“Towards the end of March, 1861,” says that writer, “Prince Kong, the Imperial regent, proceeded in great state to the Temple of Agriculture, on the outskirts of the Chinese part of the town of Peking, and, after offering sacrifices to the guardian Deity of mankind, who encourages their labour by giving them the gifts of the earth, put his own hand to the plough, and turned up several furrows; a crowd of notabilities, ministers, masters of the ceremonies, the great officers of state, three princes of the Imperial family, and a deputation of labourers accompanied the Emperor’s representative. As soon as Prince Kong had finished ploughing the plot of ground reserved for him, and marked out with yellow flags, the three Imperial princes, followed by the nine chief dignitaries of the empire, took their turn at the plough, till the whole field was covered with furrows, in which mandarins of lesser rank scattered the seed, whilst labourers covered with rakes and rollers the sacred germs entrusted to the ground. During the
122.—OPIUM-SMOKERS.
“This intellectual patronage, this ennobling of agriculture, has had immense results. No country in the world is cultivated with so much care, or perhaps, with more success than China. It does not contain a square inch of waste ground.
“In the province of Pe-tche-li, where land is very much cut up into small lots, agricultural operations are conducted on a limited scale, but the intelligent manner in which they are carried out, makes up for the inconveniences of this parcelling out. But few
“If, however, they are saving of the soil, they are not sparing of pains. Thanks to the abundance and cheapness of labour, they have been able to adopt a system of cultivating the earth in alternate rows, and thus never to let the ground lie fallow, but to have a succession of crops during the whole summer. Between the rows of the sorgho (holcus sorghum), which reaches a height of ten or twelve feet, they sow a plant of lesser growth, the smaller kind of millet, which thrives in the shade of its gigantic neighbour. When they have reaped the sorgho, the millet, exposed to the rays of the sun, ripens in its turn; they plant rows of beans in the midst of their maize fields, and the former ripens before the latter, of slower growth, is big enough to choke them. They plant the earth they dig out of their draining trenches with castor-oil or cotton plants, whose large green leaves make a kind of hedge to the cornfields. And when the soil is barren and full of stones they plant it with the resinous pine, or with the cathsÉ, an oily plant that flourishes on the poorest ground.
“Nothing is more stirring than the picture presented by the wide plains of Pe-tche-li at harvest time. The toil of the husbandman has brought forth its fruit; the crops of all kinds fill to overflowing the granaries; threshers, winnowers and reapers, with crowds of gleaning women and children, fill the air with their joyous songs, as half stripped beneath the glowing sun, with their pig-tails wound around their heads, they zealously toil on from daybreak to night fall, only leaving off for a few moments to swallow an onion or two, or a handful of rice, to take a few whiffs at their pipe, or to vigorously fan themselves when the heat becomes unbearable, and the perspiration is running down their stalwart limbs.
123.—CHINESE AGRICULTURE.
“Water in this province is as little neglected as the land:
“Pisciculture is practised on a large scale and in the most intelligent manner. When spring returns, a quantity of vendors of fish spawn perambulate the country to sell this precious spat
“The sea-shore at the mouth of the PeÏ-ho is covered with parks to hold the fish at low water. These are made of several lengths of blue cotton stuff stretched on a cane framework, which is fastened to a quantity of small stakes. This framework folds in any direction like the leaves of a screen. A drag net is also used by the inhabitants of the coast. Soles, sea toads, bream, gold fish, whiting, cod and a quantity of other fish are caught in the gulf of Pe-tche-li. Many cetaceous fish are also found there, dolphins, several kinds of sharks, amongst them the tiger shark (Squalus tigrinus), whose striped and spotted skin is used in several manufactures, and a large species of turtle.
124.—CHINESE FISHING.
“River fishing, with which we are better acquainted, is followed in several ingenious fashions. There is trained cormorant fishing, fly fishing, harpoon fishing, rod fishing, and net fishing; dams are also placed across the streams at the travelling periods of migratory fish. The Pei-ho, crowded with fishermen, presents a most lively appearance; on its surface you see large boats containing whole families; the women occupied in mending the nets, in making osier fishing-rods, in cleaning and salting the day’s catch, and in carrying in vases the fish they wish to keep alive; the little children, with their waists girdled with a life belt of pigs’ bladders, running about and climbing like cats up the masts and the rigging; the men dropping their large nets perpendicularly into the water, and easily raising them again by
Living is very cheap in China, owing to the skill of the agricultural labourers and that of the artisans and mechanics. A whole family can cook its meals with one or two pounds of dried grass, which costs about a penny a pound. Fire-places are very little used, except in the more northern provinces; but warm clothing is worn when the climate makes it necessary. The dwellings have a low pitch, so that with the coal found in many of the provinces, with the prunings of the trees, and with the roots of the mountain shrubs, their inhabitants can cheaply procure the fuel necessary to warm themselves with.
There is a great scarcity of forests in China, as the country has been entirely denuded to support its teeming population. Grazing fields are equally scarce, so that butcher’s meat, beef or mutton, is dear. The inhabitants however get along without it, thanks to the numerous streams, rivers, lakes, and canals which intersect China, and swarm with fish. Fishing does not take
125.—THE CUSTOM-HOUSE AT SHANGHAI.
A kind of fish exists in China which multiplies at such an astonishing rate, that it produces two broods in a month, this fish is consequently not more than a penny and the dearest tenpence a pound. All kinds of fisheries are carried on—net, rod, otter and cormorant fishing. It is thus that animal food for four hundred millions of inhabitants is provided.
Pigs, ducks, and chickens are also a great resource. Pork has become such a general article of food, that its cost is higher than that of beef, although the latter is much the scarcest.
The ducks are found in flocks of three or four thousand on the lakes and pieces of water. They are watched by children in a kind of small canoe. Sometimes the drakes bring the ducklings to the water, keeping guard over them from the bank, and recalling them when necessary with a sharp piercing cry which the young ones perfectly understand.
There is a large trade in ducks. They dry them by putting them between a couple of planks like plants; and they are sent in this guise to the most remote parts of the empire. Dogs of a particular breed, reared for the market in the southern provinces, are prepared in the same way, but only for the consumption of the very poorest classes. Goats and sheep are also rather largely made use of for food, but not to such an extent as pigs, ducks and chickens.
It may be seen therefore that the Chinese have learnt how to supply the place of the larger kind of butcher’s meat.
Vegetables however form the staple of their food. This explains how it is possible for four hundred millions of inhabitants to exist in a country whose acreage is not more than four or five times that of France. Chinese horticulture contains eighty different kinds of vegetables, and out of these eighty, at least twenty-five constitute a direct article of food for man. But the most precious of all is rice, and the Chinese spare no pains in perfecting its cultivation. In aid of this cultivation they have sacrificed their forests, dug immense lakes, and even pierced lofty mountains. For its sake they collect the water of both stream and river, and direct its course from the mountain’s foot over the soil they wish to irrigate. Perhaps no greater or more grandiose
This great work was carried out four thousand years ago, but public gratitude has not forgotten its promoter. They still point out not far from Ning-po, the field where the little peasant used to work who after accomplishing his enterprise became the great emperor Yu. All the inhabitants of the canton where he was born are considered as his descendants or as those of his family, and are exempt from taxation; and the anniversary of his birth is celebrated every year in a special temple with as much zeal as if the benefits he has bestowed were things of yesterday.
The Chinese do their best not only for rice, but for every kind of produce, or to put it better, for the earth itself, the earth that brings it forth. Agriculture to the Chinese is more than a calling, it is almost a religion. The Chinaman repeats to himself these words of the old Persian law: “Be thou just to the plant, to the bull, and to the horse; nor be thou unmindful of the dog. The earth has a right to be sown; neglect it and it will curse thee, fertilize it and it will be grateful to thee. It says to him who tills it from the right to the left, and from the left to the right, may thy fields bring forth of all that is good to eat, and may thy countless villages abound with prosperity.” It adds again, “Labour and sow: the sower who sows with purity obeys the whole law.”
When the earth therefore does not produce abundant crops, the Chinese lay the blame on themselves. They purify themselves and fast. Confucius, besides, has said: “If you wish for good agriculture, be of pure morals.”
The soil in China yields as much as ten thousand pounds of rice to every acre. Such a result says a great deal for their rural morals. While occupied in making the earth yield so plentifully, they have no time for evil thoughts or actions. A moralist has said, “There can be no cultivation without public order. Justice is begotten of the furrow. Ceres, who at Thebes and at Athens brought men together and made the laws, is the reflecting mind of men who till the soil.”
Thus we see that patience, gentleness, justice and benevolence are the predominant Chinese qualities. The Chinese have been often reproached with being atheists; but the devotion of labour, the purifications and the atonements to which they submit at the smallest warning from Heaven, free them from this reproach.
The Bonzes, the priests of the Buddhist faith, are treated by the Chinese with great respect. If this nation is not really a very religious one, at least it venerates and respects the ministers of religion.
Fig. 126 shows the usual dress of the Bonzes.
Education is widely spread in China; schools abound there. Chinese literature, without possessing very numerous works worthy of remembrance, has produced a good deal worthy of esteem.
The Theatre is a recreation much sought after by the people and by the educated classes.
| P. Sellier, p.t | Imp. Dupuy, 22, R. des Petits HÔtels | G. Regamey, lith. |
| JAPANESE | CHINESE |
| YELLOW OR MONGOLIAN RACE | |
We will make a few extracts on these points from the travels of M. de Bourboulon, edited by M. Poussielgue, which we have already quoted: “Their Book of Rites,” says M. Poussielgue, “directs that the education of the child of wealthy parents shall commence from the hour even of its birth, and bids the mother take great precautions in choosing its nurses, whom it only tolerates. A child is weaned the moment it can lift its hand to its mouth. At six years of age the elementary principles of arithmetic and geography are taught him; at seven he is separated from his mother and sisters, and no longer allowed to take meals with them; at eight the usages of politeness are instilled into him; the following year he is taught the astrological calendar; at ten he is sent to a public school, where the master teaches him to read and write and to calculate; between the ages of thirteen and fifteen he receives music lessons and sings moral maxims instead of his hymns; at fifteen come gymnastics, the use of arms, and riding; finally at twenty years of age, if he is considered worthy
126.—CHINESE BONZE.
“The Chinese schoolmasters (fig. 127) are rejected men of letters who have not succeeded in passing the examinations for civil employment. They make their scholars call out their lessons in a loud voice, and seem to have long since appreciated the value of the system of mutual instruction. They chastise culprits with their pigtails and with cat-o’-nine-tails, striking
“The importance attached by the Chinese to the writing, the reading, the grammar, and the thorough knowledge of their language, springs from its inherent difficulties.
“The ancient Chinese writing was ideographic, that is to say, it represented objects by drawn characters, similar to the Egyptian system of hieroglyphics, instead of being phonetic, that is, composed of signs corresponding with the sounds of the spoken language. Their primitive characters, two hundred and fourteen in number, were rough figures imperfectly representing material objects. Ideographical writing, the use of which by semi-barbarous peoples is easily explained, must be rather awkward for civilized men desiring to express abstract ideas. The Chinese have ingeniously modified their characters, so as to render them capable of satisfying the wants of their growing civilization. Anger was represented by a heart under a bond, a sign of slavery; friendship by two pearls exactly alike; history, by a hand holding the emblem of equity. As it was soon found that these ingenious figures were no longer sufficient, they were combined in an infinite number of ways; they were altered and multiplied to such an extent, that it takes all the science of an old man of letters to recognize the designs of the primitive writing in the present characters, which are more than forty thousand in number. It is in this way that their modern writing was gradually formed, an emblematic writing which does not correspond with the spoken language, the one solitary exception to the rule among all civilized nations.
“It is therefore easily to be understood that to read and write the Chinese language is a science exacting severe study from natives of the country, as well as from foreigners: besides, even its grammatical rules vary very much. There are three kinds of style: the ancient or sublime style, used in the old canonical books; the academical style, which is adopted for official and literary documents; and the common style.
127.—CHINESE SCHOOLMASTER.
“The Chinese attach much importance to an elegant handwriting, a clever calligrapher, or to use their own expression, a clever brush, is worthy of their admiration. Captain Bouvier and
“The appearance of Chinese writing is very odd; the characters are placed one under the other in vertical lines, and run from right to left; in a word, on this point as in many others, the Chinese proceed in a manner diametrically opposed to ours. The position in which the characters are placed is besides very important; for instance, the Emperor’s name must be written with two letters higher than the others, to omit this would be to commit treason. Everybody is familiar with Chinese or Indian ink. It is with this substance, diluted in water and used with a brush, that the Chinese trace the letters of their writing, holding their hands perpendicularly, instead of placing them horizontally, on the paper.
“Their spoken language is much less difficult; it is composed of monosyllables, the union of which, in an infinite number of ways, expresses every possible idea. I must not forget the accents which give a difference of tone and expression to the monosyllabic roots. The language of the south differs sufficiently from that of the north to prevent the natives from understanding one another without the assistance of the brush. Moreover, every province has its particular dialect.
“In spite of the difficulties presented by the reading and writing of the Chinese character, China is doubtless the land in which primary instruction is most widely spread. Schools are found even in the smallest hamlets whose rustics deprive themselves of some of their gains, in order to pay a schoolmaster. It is very seldom you meet with an entirely uneducated Chinese. The workmen and the peasants are capable of writing their own letters, reading the government bills and proclamations, and making notes of their daily business. Teaching in the primary schools has for its basis, the San-tse-king, a sacred book attributed to a disciple of Confucius, which sums up in a hundred and sixty-eight lines all acquired knowledge and science. This little encyclopÆdia, properly explained and commented on by the teacher, suffices to give Chinese children a taste for positive knowledge, and even to give them the desire of acquiring a wider education. There are also colleges in the large towns where the children of the
128.—CHINESE LOCOMOTION.
“The citizens of the Celestial Empire enjoy thorough liberty of the press, but at their own risk and peril. The government, which has no right to forbid any publication, revenges itself afterwards by inflicting the bastinado on the authors of the pamphlets and the virulent satires that daily appear attacking it. A great quantity of small portable printing-presses exists among private individuals who both use and abuse them. There is no country in the world where the walls are so thickly covered with bills and advertisements.
“The Chinese have practised the typographical art from time immemorial; but as their alphabet is composed of more than forty thousand letters, they could not make use of moveable type; they restricted themselves therefore to carving on a piece of hard board the characters they required, to wetting these characters with ink and to striking off a number of copies, by applying different sheets of paper to the board. Their binders, in opposition to ours, make these leaves up into a volume by fastening them together by their edges. A note in the preface generally mentions the place where the boards that printed the first edition of the work have been deposited.
“There are in Peking several daily papers, amongst others the Official Gazette, a government print, the subscription for which is a piastre quarterly. This print, published in pamphlet shape, is a rectangular publication containing a dozen pages, with a likeness of the philosopher Meng-tsen on the cover. It contains a summary of all public matters, and all leading events, the petitions and memorials addressed to the Emperor, his decrees, the edicts of the viceroys of the provinces, judicial ceremonies and letters of pardon, the custom-house tariffs, the court circular, the news of the day, fires, crimes, &c., and finally the incidents, fortunate or unfortunate, of the war against the rebel Tae-pings. It even acknowledges the Imperial defeats, a piece of frankness worthy of notice by the official organs of Europe and America.
“The Chinese have a traditional and quasi-religious respect for the preservation of all printed and written papers; they are carefully collected and burnt when read, so as to put them beyond the reach of profanation. It is even asserted that societies exist who
“Art like literature has been carried to some extent in an utilitarian and manufacturing sense. But imaginative art, the ideally beautiful, is a thing a Chinese does not understand.
“While acknowledging the skill with which the Chinese have written on social economy, on philosophy, on history, and on all moral and political science based on experience and logic, we must note the scarcity of their purely literary works. It must not however, be concluded that China, unlike every civilized country, does not possess plenty of poets, novelists and dramatic authors; but their little esteemed and badly remunerated productions are ephemeral. To-day an ode, something appropriate to the moment, is written, it is recited or played in the midst of applause, and to-morrow nothing remains of it.
“Theatrical propensities are nevertheless very strongly developed among the Chinese, and the cause of this forgetfulness, this neglect is that they are ashamed of attaching too much importance to a futile amusement. The managers of the theatres are generally the authors of the pieces they represent, or at any rate they modify them according to the exigencies of the actors and the suitability of the costumes. There are no permanent or authorized theatres in Peking: the government only allows their temporary construction in the open spaces of the town for a limited period during public festivals. Theatrical representations, however, take place in many of the tea-houses, which are analogous to our music-halls, and in nearly all the dwellings of the wealthy, who, every time they hire a company of actors to celebrate a family anniversary, take care, with an eye to popularity, to allow the public free ingress into that part of their house reserved for the auditorium.”
“I have just been present,” relates M. TrÈves, “at a theatrical representation given by the secretary of state Tchong-louen in the gardens of his palace in the Tartar town, in honour of the new year. The theatre was something like those constructed in Paris on the esplanade of the Invalides on the occasion of the Emperor’s fÊte: it was an ample quadrilateral building in the shape of a Greek temple, supported on either side by four columns painted in sky-blue, golden, and scarlet stripes, and with
“We took our places on a reserved platform, placed expressly for us in front of the stage; on either side were boxes with bamboo blinds whence the wives of our host and those of his guests looked on at the play: to prevent their being seen, they wore veils of silk net. The guests of lower rank were seated in the first row, on chairs grouped round small tables capable of accommodating four or five people. Behind them I could see a swarm of human heads; these were the public who crowded and pressed together to enjoy the spectacle for which they were indebted to the munificence of the illustrious Tchong-louen. At Peking as in Paris, the common people willingly undergo for the sake of amusement the fatigue of standing, without any means of resting themselves, for hours together. A few indulgent fathers had two or three children perched upon their backs, and upon their shoulders, but I could not see a single woman.
“At a signal given from our dais, the orchestra, placed at one wing of the stage, and consisting of two flutes, a drum and a harp, began a charivari which took the place of an overture; then the screen opened, and the actors all appeared in their ordinary dress, and after bowing so deeply that their foreheads touched the ground, their leader advanced to the edge of the stage and commenced a pompous recital of the dramas they were going to perform.”
Here the writer gives a description of the pieces represented, which were kinds of allegories and historical pageants. Besides these regular theatrical representations, there are in Peking many acrobatic troops, male and female rope-dancers, and itinerant circuses.
129.—A CHINESE PLAY.
Marionettes, absolutely identical with those in Europe, are seen in China. Which nation is their inventor? The name by which
We will end our account of the Chinese with a glance at their administration of justice and their judicial forms. We again quote from M. Poussielgue:
“There is a direct relation in China between the penal judicial code and family organization. If the Emperor is the father and the mother of his subjects, the magistrates who represent him are also the father and mother of those they rule over. Every outrage against the law is an outrage upon the family. Impiety, one of the greatest crimes foreseen and punished by the law, is really nothing but a want of respect for parents. This is how the penal code defines impiety. ‘He is impious who insults his nearest relations, or he who brings an action against them, or who does not go into mourning for them, or who does not venerate their memory, or he who is wanting in the attention due to those to whom he owes his existence, by whom he has been educated, or by whom he has been protected and assisted.’ The punishments incurred for the crime of impiety are terrible; we intend to speak of them later.
“In thus carrying the feeling of what is due to family ties into the region of politics, the Chinese legislators have created a governmental machinery of prodigious power, which has lasted for thirty centuries, and which, neither the numerous revolutions and dynastic changes, neither the antagonism of the northern and southern races, neither the immense territorial extent of the empire, neither religious scepticism, nor finally the selfish creed of materialism developed to excess by a decayed and stationary civilization, have been able to destroy, or even seriously to disturb.
130.—A CHINESE JUNK.
“Amongst the supreme courts that sit at Peking, is the Court of Appeal or Cassation (Ta-li-sse). Next to it come the assizes held in the chief towns of each province, and presided over by a special magistrate bearing the title of Commissary of the Court of Offences. A second magistrate of inferior rank exercises the duties of public accuser at these assizes. In towns of second and third importance inferior tribunals exist which have but one judge, the mandarin or the sub-prefect of the department. The
“The result of this judicial organization is that the sub-prefect is invested with the entire correctional power within the limits of his civil jurisdiction, a very faulty state of things, which has been the cause of enormous abuses.
“There are no advocates in China, and, as has been seen, very few judges. Consequently the mode of administering justice is very summary, and the guarantees enjoyed by a prisoner amount to nothing. His friends or relations can, it is true, plead in his favour, but it is of no use, unless it happens to suit the mandarin at the head of the tribunal. As for the witnesses, they are liable to be flogged with a rattan, accordingly as their evidence is agreeable or not. Generally speaking, the long-winded witnesses are the most disagreeable to the mandarin who has a mass of matters to settle, and whose time does not allow him to enter into petty details. In point of fact the prisoner’s acquittal or condemnation depends upon the subaltern officers of the court, who prepare the proceedings in a manner favourable to the prisoners or the reverse, accordingly as they have received more or less money from his friends.
“If there is something to be praised in Chinese jurisprudence, the way in which the punishments are carried out is on the contrary shocking. Man is considered as a being sensitive only to physical agony and to death; Chinese legislators have not sought to restrain him by his honour, by his pride in himself, nor even by his self interest. The penal code consists mainly of the bastinado, inflicted with a thick bamboo cane, with the thick end or the thin one, and consisting of from ten up to two hundred blows, as the crime is trifling or serious, or as the object stolen is of little or of great value. The bastinado is given immediately in presence of the tribunal. The most common punishments, are, after the bastinado, the cangue, the pillory, imprisonment and perpetual exile into Tartary for mandarins who have committed political offences. We have mentioned that the High Court of Appeal alone can decide on a death sentence; but the sufferings inflicted by the orders of the inferior tribunals are so horrible, the executioners are so ingenious in varying the tortures without causing death, the management of the prisons is so hateful, and finally a man sentenced to the cangue, the pillory, or the cage is
131.—CHINESE BEGGARS.
“Capital punishment, horribly varied in bygone days, is now only inflicted in three ways; strangulation, decapitation, and the slow death by stabbing.
“Strangulation is effected by means of a silken cord that two executioners pull at each end, or by an iron collar tightened by a screw, very much like the garote at present used in Spain. Strangulation by the silken cord, is reserved for the princes of the Imperial family; the iron collar is used to destroy, in the silence of the prison, those whose death it is desired to conceal.
“In public, the only mode of execution is decapitation, applied to all vulgar crimes. The preparations for this mode of death are very simple, and its action very rapid, owing to the temper and weight of the swords, and the skill of those who wield them. The guillotine never attained the lightning-like rapidity of the satellites of the dreaded Yeh, the viceroy from whom the Anglo-French delivered the province of Canton; they could strike off a hundred heads in a few moments. Their master used to boast that their skill was derived from a hundred thousand subjects of experiment he had furnished them with in less than two years.
“The slow death of stabbing is inflicted for the crimes of treason, parricide, and incest. The preparation for this mode of punishment must double the miseries of the condemned convict. Securely tied to a post, his feet and hands fastened with ropes, his head is placed in a kind of pillory, while the magistrate delegated to witness the execution of the sentence, draws from a covered basket a knife, on the handle of which is written the part of the body in which it is to be inserted. This horrible torture is continued until chance selects the heart, or some other vital part. We hasten to add, that generally the convict’s friends purchase the connivance of the magistrate, who takes care to draw at the very first venture, the knife intended for the mortal blow.
“It is little wonder that the Chinese accustomed to such penalties, and to the hideous and frequent spectacles they afford, should early become inured to the idea of death, and that even
“I had the curiosity to be present at one of the last sittings of the Court, and at my request a place was reserved for me, where I could see without being seen.
132.—CHINESE PUNISHMENT.
“The hall of justice had nothing remarkable in an architectural sense. It was surrounded by a lofty wall, nearly as high as the principal edifice. The first court is enclosed by buildings used as prisons. I saw some boxes made of enormously thick bamboo bars placed at a little distance apart, in which prisoners were shut up during the night.
“In this court a crowd of wretched creatures with emaciated limbs, livid faces, and barely covered with a few loathsome rags, lay sweltering in the sun. Some were fastened by the foot with an iron chain to a weight so heavy, that they were unable to stir it, and staggered round it like caged wild beasts, continually turning
133.—CHINESE PUNISHMENTS.
“One of these prisoners had his left hand and right foot fastened in a board a few inches in width; a policeman dragged him forward by an iron chain fastened to a heavy collar clasped round his neck, whilst another flogged him from behind, to make him go on. This wretched creature crept along with great difficulty on the leg that was still free, his body bent double in the most painful position (fig. 132).
“In another corner of the court, other prisoners were undergoing the punishment of the cangue. I also saw a painful sight, a thief buried alive in a wooden cage.
134.—A CHINESE COURT OF JUSTICE.
“Imagine a heavy tub upside down, under which a human being is made to crouch; his head and his hands are slipped through three round holes, made so excessively tight that he cannot remove them; the weight of the cage presses on his
“The entrance to the hall of justice is embellished with an external portico, on which some mythological scenes are painted in glowing colours.
“Presently the folding gates opened with a loud creaking, and admitted the crowd that had gathered in the first court. At the end of the large hall on a raised daÏs, I perceived Tchong-louen in his ceremonial costume, surrounded with his councillors and the subaltern officers of justice. In front of him, on a table covered with a red cloth, were the records of criminal proceedings, brushes and saucers for the Indian ink, a bookcase containing the codes and the books of jurisprudence that might have to be consulted, and a large case full of painted and numbered pieces of wood. Behind the mandarin stood his fan-bearer, and two children richly dressed in silk, who held over his head the insignia of his dignity. On the twelve stone steps that ascended to the dais were posted, first, the executioner, conspicuous for his wire hat, and his red dress. He leant his right hand upon an enormous rattan cane, while his left wielded a curved sword; then came his assistants and the jailors carrying different instruments of torture which they clashed noisily together, whilst continuing at measured intervals to utter horrible yells, intended to throw terror into the minds of the prisoners. All round the hall stood police soldiers, in the red tasselled ManchÚ cap, armed with a short spear, and with two swords sheathed in the same scabbard. Red draperies inscribed with various sentences, and lanterns representing different monsters were hung around the walls. In short, the whole scene was got up to impress the eager and curious mob, which crowded thickly beneath the overhanging side galleries, with the imposing spectacle of the symbols of justice, as represented in fig. 134.
“I witnessed from the place reserved for me behind the judgment seat the trial of half a score of robbers. I will not attempt to describe the scenes of torture that followed their repeated denials of guilt. When a prisoner persisted in asserting his
135.—CHINESE SOLDIERS.
Military matters are but little attended to in China. This sceptical and timorous nation is no believer in military glory and
136.—CHINESE TROOPER.
A nation of four hundred million inhabitants was conquered by six thousand Frenchmen. The unworthy cowardice of the Chinese explain the fact that they have always been an easy prey to conquerors.
In Chinese military matters we will restrict ourselves to reproducing their uniforms. Fig. 135 represents that of their infantry, and fig. 136 that of their mounted troops.
137.—THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.
The real army of the Chinese nation is the care with which it holds itself aloof from foreigners, and the manner in which it forbids them access to its territory. Retrenched behind its wall, it is happy in its own way and does without soldiers. The system seems a good one, since it has succeeded for so many centuries.
The wall of China, which rigorously excludes all strangers from the empire, is no mere metaphor. It is a solid reality. Fig. 137 gives a view of the Great Wall taken near Peking.
The Marquis de Moges, an attachÉ of the embassy when M. Gros was French Ambassador in China, has wittily summed up, in his account of his travels, the contrast between Chinese and Western civilization. “In China,” he says, “the magnetic needle points to the south;—the cardinal points are five in number;—the left hand is the place of honour;—politeness requires you to keep your head covered in the presence of a superior, or in that of a person whom you wish to honour;—a book is read from right to
The Japanese Family.
Japan, consisting of a large island, that of Nipon, and seven other smaller islands, of which the principal are Yesso, Sitkokf, and Kiousiou, is inhabited by an industrious and intelligent people. The Japanese, whilst resembling the Chinese in many points, differ from them in many others, and are far superior in a moral point of view to the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire.
The written character of Japan is the same as that of China, and its literature is not a distinctive one, but entirely Chinese. The two creeds of Buddha and of Confucius prevail in Japan as they do in China. The worship of these creeds is carried on in both countries in similar pagodas, and their ministers are the same bonzes with shaven heads and long gray robes. The buildings and the junks of both nations are identical. Their food is the same, a diet of vegetables, principally rice, and fish, washed down by plenty of tea and spirit. The coolies carry their loads in exactly the same manner in Japan and in China, at Nangasaki and at Peking, and make the streets resound with the same shrill measured cries. The Japanese women wear their hair as the Chinese women used to do before they adopted the fashion of pig-tails, and the townspeople in Yeddo, as in Nankin, seclude themselves in their houses, which are impervious both to heat and cold.
But the resemblance stops there. The Japanese, a warlike and feudal nation, would be indignant at being confounded with the servile and crafty inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, who despise war, and whose sole aim is commerce. A Chinaman begins to laugh when he is reproached with running away from the enemy, or when he is convicted of having told a lie; such matters give him little concern. A Japanese sets a different value on his life and on his honour; he is warlike and haughty. A Japanese soldier always confronts his enemy. To deprive him of
A few peculiarities, more especially found in the inhabitants of the sea coasts, the fishermen and the sailors, separate the Japanese physical type from that of the Chinese. The former are small, vigorous, active men with heavy jaws, thick lips, and a small nose, flat at the bridge, but yet with an aquiline profile. Their hair is somewhat inclined to be curly.
The Japanese are generally of middle height. They have a large head, rather high shoulders, a broad chest, a long waist, fleshy hips, slender short legs, and small hands and feet. The full face of those who have a very retreating forehead and particularly prominent cheek-bones is rather square than oval in shape. Their eyes are more projecting than those of Europeans, and are rather more veiled by the eyelid. The general effect is not that of the Chinese or Mongolian type. The Japanese have a larger head than is customary with individuals of these races, their face is longer, their features are more regular, and their nose is more prominent and better shaped.
They have all thick, sleek, dark black hair, and a considerable quantity of it on their faces. The colour of their skin varies according to the class they belong to, from the sallow sunburnt complexion of the inhabitants of southern Europe to the deep tawny hue of that of the native of Java. The most general tint is a sallow brown, but none remind you of the yellow skin of the Chinese. The women are fairer than the men. Amongst the upper and even the middle classes, some are to be met with with a perfectly white complexion.
Two indelible features distinguish the Japanese from the European type. Their half-veiled eyes, and a disfiguring hollow in the breast, which is noticeable in them in the flower of their youth, even in the handsomest figures.
138.—JAPANESE.
Both men and women have black eyes, and white sound teeth. Their countenance is mobile and possesses great variety of expression. It is the custom for their married women to blacken their teeth. The national Japanese costume is a kind of open dressing gown (fig. 138), which is made a little wider and a little more flowing for the women than for the men. It is fastened round the waist by a belt. That, worn by the men, is a narrow
The Japanese wear no linen, but they bathe, as we have said, every other day. The women wear an under-garment of red silk crape.
139.—A JAPANESE FATHER.
In summer, the peasants, the fishermen, the mechanics and the Indian coolies follow their calling in a state of almost complete nudity, and the women only wear a skirt from the waist downwards. When it rains they cover themselves with capes made of straw, or oiled paper, and with hats made, shield shape, of cane bark. In winter the men of the lower classes wear, beneath their kirimon or dressing-gown, a tight fitting vest and pair of trousers of blue cotton stuff, and the women one or more wadded cloaks. The middle classes always wear a vest and trousers out of doors.
Figs. 138, 139, 140, and 141 represent different Japanese types.
Their costume generally differs only in the material of which it is made. The nobility alone have the right to wear silk. They
140.—JAPANESE SOLDIER.
The floors of Japanese dwellings are covered with mattings, which take the place of every other kind of furniture.
A Japanese has but one wife.
The Japanese have a taste for science and art, and are fond of music and pageants. Their manufactures are largely developed. They make all sorts of fine stuffs, work skilfully in iron and copper, make capital sword-blades, and their wood carvings, their lacquer-work, and their china, enjoy a wide reputation.
Political power is divided between an hereditary and despotic governor, the TaÏcoon, and a spiritual chief, the Mikado.
The creed of Buddhism, that of the Kamis, and the doctrines of Confucius equally divide the religious tendencies of the Japanese.
141.—JAPANESE NOBLE.
We will give a few details on the interesting inhabitants of Japan, from the account of a visit to that country written by M. Humbert, the Swiss plenipotentiary there, which was published in 1870 under the title of “Japan.”
M. Humbert was present at the ceremonies which took place on the occasion of an official visit paid by the TaÏcoon to the Mikado, and he gives the following account of it:—
“While I was in Japan, it happened that the TaÏcoon paid a visit of courtesy to the Mikado.
“This was an extraordinary event. It made a great sensation, inspired the brush of several native artists, and gave resident foreigners a chance of seeing a little more clearly into the reciprocal relation of the two powers of the empire. Their respective position is really one of considerable interest.
“In the first place, the Mikado has over his temporal rival the advantage of birth and the prestige of his sacred character. Grandson of the Sun, he continues the traditions of the gods, the demi-gods, the heroes, and the hereditary sovereigns who have reigned over Japan in an uninterrupted succession since the creation of the empire of the eight great islands. Supreme head of their religion, under whatever form it may present itself to the people, he officiates as the sovereign pontiff of the ancient national creed of the Kamis. At the summer solstice, he offers sacrifices to the earth; at the winter solstice, to heaven. A god is specially deputed to watch over his precious destiny; from the shrine of the temple he inhabits at the top of Mount Kamo, in the neighbourhood of the Mikado’s residence, this deity watches night and day over the DaÏri. And finally at the death of a Mikado, his name, which it has been ordained shall be inscribed in the temples of his ancestors, is engraved at Kioto, in the temple of Hatchiman; and at IsyÉ, in the temple of the Sun.
“It is indubitably from heaven that the Mikado, both theocratic emperor and hereditary sovereign, derives the authority which he exercises over his people. Though now-a-days, it must be acknowledged, he scarcely knows how to employ it. However, from time to time it seems proper to him to confer pompous titles, which are entirely honorary, on a few old feudal nobles who have deserved well of the altar. Sometimes also he allows himself the luxury of openly protesting against those acts of the temporal power, which seem to infringe on his prerogatives. This is the course he took with special reference to the treaties made by the TaÏcoon with several western nations; it is true that he finally sanctioned them, but that was because he could not help himself.
“Now the TaÏcoon, as everybody knows, is the fortunate successor of a common usurper. In fact, the founders of his dynasty, subjects of the then Mikado, robbed their lord and master of his army, his navy, his lands, and his treasure, as if they were desirous of depriving him of any subject of earthly anxiety.
“Possibly the Mikado was too ready to fall in with their plans. The offer of a two-wheeled chariot drawn by an ox, for his daily drive in the parks of his residence, doubtless a considerable privilege in a country where nobody uses a conveyance, should not have persuaded him to sacrifice the manly exercises of archery, hawking, and hunting the stag or wild boar. He might likewise, without making himself absolutely invisible, have spared himself the fatigue of the ceremonious receptions where, motionless on a raised platform, he accepts the silent adoration of his courtiers prostrated at his feet. The Mikado, now, they say, only communicates with the exterior world through the medium of the female attendants intrusted with the care of his person. It is they who dress and feed him, clothing him daily in a fresh costume, and serving his meals on table utensils fresh every morning from the manufactory which for centuries has monopolized their supply. His sacred feet never touch the ground; his countenance is never exposed in broad daylight to the common gaze; in a word, the Mikado must be kept pure from all contact with the elements, the sun, the moon, the earth, mankind, and himself.
“It was necessary that the interview should take place at Kioto, the holy town which the Mikado is never allowed to leave. His palace, and the ancient temples of his family are his sole personal possessions there, the town itself being under the rule of the temporal emperor; but the latter dedicates its revenues to the expenses of the spiritual sovereign, and condescends to keep up a permanent garrison within its walls for the protection of the pontifical throne.
“The preliminaries on both sides having been carried out, a proclamation announced the day when the TaÏcoon intended to issue forth from his capital, the immense and populous modern town of Yeddo, the head-quarters of the political and civil government of the empire, the seat of the Naval and Military Schools, of the Interpreters’ College, and of the Academy of Medicine and Philosophy.
“He was preceded by a division of his army equipped in the European manner, and, while these picked troops, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, were marching on Kioto by land along the great Imperial highway of the TokaÏdo, the fleet received orders to set sail for the inland sea. The temporal sovereign himself, embarked in the splendid steamer, the Lycemoon, which he had purchased of the firm of Dent and Co. for five hundred thousand dollars. Six other steamers escorted him; the Kandimarrah, notorious for its voyage from Yeddo to San-Francisco to convey the Japanese embassy sent to the United States; the sloop of war, the Soembing, a gift from the King of the Netherlands; the yacht Emperor, a present from Queen Victoria; and some frigates built in America and in Holland to orders given by the embassies of 1859 and 1862. Manned entirely by Japanese crews, this squadron left the bay of Yeddo, doubled Cape Sagami and the promontory of Idsou, crossed the Linschoten straits, and coasting along the eastern shores of the island of Awadsi, dropped its anchors in the Hiogo roadstead, where the TaÏcoon disembarked amid larboard and starboard salutes.
“His state entry into Kioto took place a few days later, with no military parade but that of his own troops, as the Mikado possesses neither soldiers nor artillery, with the exception of a body-guard of archers, recruited from the families of his kinsmen or of the feudal nobility. Indeed, he can hardly afford even on this moderate scale, the expenses of his court; and his own revenue being insufficient, he is obliged to accept with one hand an income the TaÏcoon consents to pay him out of his own private purse, and with the other, the amounts that the brethren of a few monastic orders yearly collect for him, from village to village, in even the furthest provinces of the empire. Another circumstance that assists him to support his rank, is the disinterested abnegation of many of his high officials. Some of them serve him with no other remuneration but the free use of the costly regulation dresses of the old imperial wardrobe. On their return home, after doffing their court costume, these haughty gentlemen are not ashamed to seat themselves at a weavers’ loom or an embroidery frame. More than one piece of the rich silk productions of Kioto, the handiwork of which is so much admired, has issued from some of the princely houses, whose names are inscribed in the register of the Kamis.
142.—JAPANESE PALANQUIN.
“These drawbacks did not prevent the Mikado from inaugurating the day of the interview, by exhibiting to his royal visitor the spectacle of the grand procession of the DaÏri. Accompanied by his archers, by his household, by his courtiers, and by the whole of his pontifical staff, he left his palace by the southern gateway, which, towards the close of the ninth century, was decorated by the historical compositions of the celebrated painter-poet, KosÉ Kanaoka. He descended along the boulevards to the suburb
“The ancient insignia of his supreme power were carried in state at the head of the procession; the mirror of his ancestress Izanami, the beautiful goddess who gave birth to the sun in the island of Awadsi; the glorious standard, the long paper streamers of which had waved above the heads of the soldiery of Zinmou the conqueror; the flaming sword of the hero of Yamato, who overcame the eight-headed hydra to which virgins of princely blood used to be sacrificed; the seal that stamped the first laws of the empire; and the cedar wood fan, shaped like a lath and used as a sceptre, which for more than two thousand years has descended from the hands of the dead Mikado to those of his successor.
“I will not stop to describe another part of the pageant, intended doubtless to complete and enhance the effect of the rest, namely the banners embroidered with the armorial bearings of all the ancient noble families of the empire. Perhaps they were intended to remind the TaÏcoon, that, in the eyes of the old territorial nobility, he was nothing but a parvenu; if so, the parvenu could smile complacently at the thought, that the whole of the Japanese grandees, the great as well as the lesser daÏmios, are, nevertheless, obliged to pass six months of the year, at his Court in Yeddo, and offer him their homage in the midst of the nobles of his own creation.
“The most numerous and the most picturesque ranks of the procession were those of the representatives of all the sects who recognise the spiritual supremacy of the Mikado. The dignitaries of the ancient creed of the Kamis are scarcely distinguishable, as to dress, from the high officials of the palace. I have already described their costume, it reminds the spectators that the Japanese possessed originally a religion without a priesthood. Buddhism, on the contrary, which came from China, and rapidly spread throughout the empire, has an immense variety of sects, rites, orders, and brotherhoods. The bonzes and the monks belonging to this faith composed in the procession endless ranks of devout-looking individuals, with the tonsure or with entirely shaven heads, some of them uncovered, and some wearing curiously shaped caps, mitres, and hats with wide brims. Some of them carried a crozier in their right hand, others a rosary, others again,
“Behind them came the household of the Mikado. The pontifical body-guard in their full dress, aim beyond everything at elegance. Leaving breast-plates and coats of mail to the men-at-arms of the TaÏcoon, they wear a little lacquer-work cap, ornamented on both sides with rosettes, and a rich silk tunic trimmed with lace edgings. The width of their trousers conceals their feet. They are equipped with a large curved sabre, a bow, and a quiver full of arrows.
“Some of the mounted ones had a long riding-whip fastened to their wrist by a coarse silken cord.
“A great deal of brutality is too often hidden beneath this imposing exterior. The wildness and the dissipation of the young nobles of the Japanese pontifical court have supplied history with pages recalling the worst period of papal Rome, the days of CÆsar Borgia. Conrad Kramer, the envoy of the Dutch West Indian islands to the court of Kioto, was allowed to be present in 1626 at a festival held in honour of a visit of the temporal emperor to his spiritual sovereign. He relates that the following day, corpses of women, young girls, and children, who had fallen victims to nocturnal outrages, were found in the streets of the capital. A still larger number of married women and maidens, whom curiosity had attracted to Kioto, were lost by their husbands and parents in the turmoil of the crowded streets, and were only found a week or a fortnight later, their families being utterly unable to bring their abducers to justice.
“Polygamy being a legal institution for the Mikado only, it was perhaps natural for him to make some display of his prerogative. It costs him sufficiently dear. It is the abyss hidden with flowers that the first usurpers of the imperial power dug for the feet of the successors of Zinmou. It is easy to imagine the cynical smile on the lips of the TaÏcoon as he saw the long row of the equipages of the DaÏri making its appearance.
“A pair of black buffaloes, driven by pages in white smocks, were harnessed to each of these cumbrous vehicles which were made of precious woods and glistened with coats of varnish of different tints. They contained the empress and the twelve other legitimate wives of the Mikado seated behind doors of open latticework.
“When the Mikado himself leaves his residence, it is always in his pontifical litter. This litter, fastened on long shafts, and borne by fifty porters in white liveries, can be seen from a long distance off towering above the crowd. It is constructed in the shape of a mikosis, the kind of shrine in which the holy relics of the Kamis are exposed. It may be compared to a garden summer-house, with a cupola roof with bells hanging all round its base. On the top of the cupola there is a ball, and on top of the ball there is a kind of cock couchant on its spurs, with its wings extended and its tail spread: this is meant as a representation of the mythological bird known in China and Japan under the name of FoÔ.
“This portable summer-house, glistening all over with gold, is so very hermetically closed that it is difficult to believe that any body could be put inside it. A proof, however, that it is really used for the high purpose attributed to it, is that on each side of it are seen walking the women who are the domestic attendants of the Mikado. They alone have the privilege of surrounding his person. To the rest of his court as well as to his people, the Mikado remains an invisible, dumb, and inapproachable divinity. He kept up this character even in the interview with the TaÏcoon.
“Amongst the group of buildings that constitute the right of Kioto to be styled the pontifical residence, there is one that might be called the Temple of Audience, for it is constructed in the sacred style of architecture peculiar to the religious edifices of the faith of the Kamis, and it bears like them the name of Mia. Adjoining the apartments inhabited by the Mikado, it stands at the bottom of a large court paved and planted with trees, in which are marshalled the escorts of honour on high and solemn festivals.
“A detachment of officers of the artillery and of the body-guards of the TaÏcoon (fig. 143), and several groups of dignitaries of the Mikado’s suite drew up successively in this open space.
“The women had retired to their own apartments.
143.—THE TAÏCOON’S GUARDS.
“Deputations of bonzes and different monastic orders occupied the corridors along the surrounding walls. Soldiers of the TaÏcoonal garrison of Kioto, posted at intervals, kept the line of the avenue which led to the broad steps reaching up to the front
“Presently the sound of flutes, of sea-shells and of the gongs of the pontifical chapel, proceeding from the left wing of the building, announced that the Mikado was entering the sanctuary. A deep silence fell upon the crowd. An hour passed away in solemn expectation, whilst the preliminaries of the reception were being performed. Suddenly a flourish of trumpets announced the arrival of the TaÏcoon. He advanced up the avenue on foot and without any escort; his prime minister, the commanders in chief of the army and navy, and a few members of the council of the Court of Yeddo, walked at a respectful distance behind him. He stopped for a moment at the foot of the great staircase, and immediately the doors of the temple slowly opened, gliding from right to left in their grooves. He then ascended the steps, and the spectacle which had held in suspense the expectation of the multitude at last unveiled itself to their eyes.
“A large green awning of cane-bark fastened to the ceiling of the hall, hung within two or three feet of the floor. Through this narrow space, could be perceived a couch of mats and carpets, on which the broad folds of an ample white robe spread themselves out. This was all that could be seen of the spectacle of the Mikado on his throne.
“The chinks in the plaits of the cane awning allowed him to see everything without being seen. Wherever he directed his gaze, he perceived nothing but heads bent before his invisible majesty. One alone remained erect on the summit of the stairs of the temple, but it was one crowned with the lofty golden coronet, the royal symbol of the temporal head of the empire. And even he too, the powerful sovereign whose might is boundless, when he had reached the last step, bent his head, and sinking slowly, fell on his knees, stretched his arms forward towards the threshold of the throne-room, and bowed his forehead to the very ground.
“From that moment, the ceremony of the interview was accomplished, the aim of the solemnity was gained. The TaÏcoon had openly prostrated himself at the feet of the Mikado.
144.—A LADY OF THE COURT.
“The interview at Kioto, had for its result two facts. By the first, the bending of the knee, the temporal sovereign showed that he continued to be the traditional obedient son of the high pontiff of the national religion; but, by the second, that is to say by accepting this act of homage, the theocratic emperor formally recognised the representative of a dynasty sprung from a source alien to the only legitimate one.”
As the art of war is of some importance in Japan, we quote a few details from M. Humbert, on the equipments and the uniforms of the TaÏcoon’s soldiers.
“The common soldiers are,” M. Humbert tells us, “inhabitants of the mountains of Akoui. They return to their homes after a short service of two or three years. Their uniform is made of blue cotton stuff, striped with white across the shoulders, and consists of a tight-fitting pair of trousers, and a shirt like that worn by the followers of Garibaldi. They wear cotton socks, leather sandals, and a waist-belt supporting a large sword in a japanned scabbard. Their cartridge-pouch and their bayonet are slung to their right side by a baldric. Their get-up is completed by a pointed hat, sloping at the sides, and made of lacquered cardboard; but they only wear it when on guard or at drill.
“As for the muskets of the Japanese troops, they have all, it is true, percussion-locks, but they vary both in calibre and in make, according to where they happen to come from. I saw four different kinds in the racks of some barracks at Benten, which a Yakounine did me the favour to show me. He showed me first a Dutch sample musket, and then one of an inferior quality manufactured in some workshops that had been started in Yeddo to turn out arms copied from this sample; he then pointed out an American gun; and finally, a MiniÉ rifle, the use of which a young officer was teaching a squad of soldiers in the barrack-yard.”
The dress of the Japanese soldiery is curious in this respect, that it reproduces and preserves the whole military paraphernalia of European feudal times. A helmet, a coat-of-mail, a halberd, and a two-handed sword, such are the equipment of the better class of soldiery.
Fencing is held in high esteem in the Japanese army. The men are very clever at this exercise, which keeps up their vigour and their skill. Even the women practise it. Their weapon is a lance with a bent piece of iron at the end of it. The ladies learn how to use it in a series of regular positions and attitudes. The Japanese Amazons can also skilfully make use of a kind of knife, fastened to the wrist with a long silken string. When they have hurled this weapon at the head of their enemy, they draw it back again by means of the cord. The men also hurl the
The Japanese nobles carry very costly weapons. The temper of their sword-blades is matchless, and their sword-hilts and scabbards are enriched with finely chased and engraved metal ornaments. But the chief value of their swords lies in their great age and reputation. In old families, every sword has a history and tradition of its own, whose brilliancy corresponds with the blood it has shed. A maiden sword must not remain so in the hand of its purchaser. Till an opportunity turns up of dyeing it with human blood, its possessor tries its prowess on living animals, or better still, on the corpses of executed criminals. The executioner, having obtained permission, hands him over two or three dead bodies. Our Japanese then proceeds to fasten them to crosses, or on trestles, in a courtyard of his house, and practises cutting, slashing, and thrusting, till he has acquired enough strength and skill to cut a couple of bodies in two at one stroke.
The sword, in Japan, is the classical, the national weapon. Nevertheless, in process of time, it will have to give way to the new improved firearms. In spite of the traditional prestige with which the Japanese nobility still endeavour to surround the former old-fashioned weapon; in spite of the contempt they affect for military innovations; the rifle, the democratic arm of arms, is becoming more and more used in Japan. This weapon will inaugurate a social revolution that will put an end to the feudal system. The rifle will cause an Eastern ’89 in Japan.
We have said that two creeds are followed in Japan, the Buddhist faith and the religion of the Kamis. The latter, with its ancient rites, has been replaced, however, nearly throughout the empire by the former.
We quote some of M. Humbert’s remarks on Buddhism.
“Our imagination can hardly conceive,” says this traveller, “that nearly a third of the human race has no religious belief but that of Buddhism, a creed without a God, a faith of negation, an invention of despair.
“One would wish to persuade oneself that the multitudes who follow its doctrines, do not understand the faith they profess, or at least refuse to admit its natural consequences. The idolatrous
“On the other hand, it is impossible not to recognize the influence of the philosophy of final annihilation in many of the habits and customs of Japanese life. The Irowa teaches the school children that life disappears like a dream, and leaves no trace behind. A Japanese, arrived at man’s estate, sacrifices with the most disdainful indifference his own life or that of his neighbour, to appease his pride, or for some trifling cause of anger. Murders and suicides are of such every-day occurrence in Japan, that there are few families of gentle birth who do not make it a point of honour to boast at least one sword that has been dyed in blood.
“Buddhism is, however, superior in some respects to the creeds it has dethroned. It owes this relative superiority to the justice of its fundamental axiom, which is an avowal of a need for a redeeming principle, grounded on the double fact of the existence of evil in the nature of man, and of an universal state of misery and suffering in the world.
“The promises of the religion of the Kamis had all reference to this life. A strict observance of the rules of purification would preserve the faithful from the five great ills, which are the fire of heaven, sickness, poverty, exile, and early death. The aim of their religious festivals was the glorification of the heroes of the empire. But were patriotism idealized and exalted into a national creed, it would still be true that this natural feeling, so precious and so appropriate, could never suffice to satisfy the soul and answer its every craving. The human soul is more boundless than the world. It needs a belief to raise it beyond the earth. Buddhism to a certain extent met these aspirations which had been hitherto neglected. This circumstance alone will explain the success with which it is propagated, in Japan and elsewhere, by the mere force of persuasion. At all events we may well believe that it is not its abstract and philosophical form that has made it so popular, and nothing is a better proof of this than its present state.
“The bonzes Sinran, Nitziten, and twenty or thirty others, have made themselves a reputation as founders of sects, each of
145.—A KAMIS TEMPLE, JAPAN.
“Thus one particular brotherhood has a monopoly of the patronage of the great family rosary. It must be explained that a Buddhist rosary can only exercise its power if its beads are properly enumerated. Now in a numerous family there is no guarantee against errors being committed in the use of the rosary; whence the inefficiency it is sometimes accused of. Instead of indulging in recrimination, however, the plan pursued is to send
“This good man hastens up with his instrument, which is about as big as a good-sized boa-constrictor, and places it in the hands of the family kneeling in a circle, whilst he himself, standing in front of the shrine of the domestic idol, directs operations with a bell and a small hammer. At a given signal, father, mother, and children, intone with the whole force of their lungs the prayers agreed upon. The small and the large beads of the rosary and the strokes of the hammer fall with a cadenced rhythm that inspires them. The rosary ring grows excited, their cries become passionate, their arms and hands work like machinery, the perspiration streams down them, and their bodies get stiff with fatigue. At last the close of the ceremony leaves everybody breathless, exhausted, but radiant with happiness, for the interceding gods must be satisfied!
“Buddhism is a flexible conciliating, insinuating religion, which accommodates itself to the bent and the habits of the most different races. From the very first, the bonzes in Japan managed to get themselves entrusted with some of the shrines and small chapels of the Kamis, in order to protect them in the enclosures of their sanctuaries. They hastened to add to their ceremonies symbols borrowed from the ancient national faith; and in short, for the purpose of better fusing the two creeds, they introduced into their temples, Kamis deities invested with the titles and attributes of Hindoo divinities, and at the same time, Hindoo gods transformed into Japanese Kamis. There was nothing inadmissible in these exchanges, which were explained in the most natural manner by the dogma of transmigration. Thanks to this combination of the two creeds, which received the name of Rioobou-Sintoo, Buddhism has become the prevalent religion of Japan.
“.... Within their temples the bonzes officiate at the altar, in the sight of the people, beyond the sanctuary which a veil separates from the crowd. The latter are only directly addressed by them in preaching, and only on the special festivals consecrated to this practice.
“They are only allowed to go in procession at certain periods of the year, and then only in the presence of the government officials who superintend public pageants.
146.—JAPANESE PAGODA.
“The pastoral portions of their duty have been cut down to such narrow limits, that I can only find one word to apply to the duties that remain. They are simply the duties of a mute. In fact, the bonzes perform the sacramental ceremonies that the
The Indo-Chinese Family.
The people of Indo-China, whom we consider to belong to the Yellow Race, have a darker complexion than the Chinese and the Japanese. Their stature is smaller, and their civilization is less developed. They are generally of an indolent disposition.
To this group belong the Burmans, the Annamites and the Siamese.
The Burmans and the Annamites.—The Burmese are a nation which has made a good deal of progress in civilization. In this respect the Annamites are not behind them. The physical, moral, and political characteristics of these two nations have no particular point of interest to engage our attention. We content ourselves with showing the reader (figs. 147 and 148) the types and the costumes of the inhabitants of the Burmese Empire.
The Siamese.—The population of the kingdom of Siam, which amounts to nearly five millions, scarcely includes two millions of Siamese.
The Siamese, according to the travelling notes of M. Henry Mouhot, a French naturalist, are easily recognized by their effeminate and idle appearance, and by their servile physiognomy. Nearly all have rather a flat nose, prominent cheek-bones, a dull unintelligent eye, broad nostrils, a wide mouth, lips reddened by their habit of chewing betel, and teeth as black as ebony. They all keep their heads entirely shaved, except just on the top, where they allow a tuft to grow. Their hair is black and coarse. The women wear the same tuft, but their hair is finer and carefully kept. The dress of both men and women is by no means an elaborate one.
Figs. 149, 150, and 151 give an exact idea of the type and mode of dress of the Siamese. A piece of cloth, which they raise behind, and the two ends of which they fasten to their belt, is
147.—BURMESE NOBLE.
The Siamese are passionately fond of trinkets. Provided they glitter, it matters little whether they are real or false. They cover their women and their children with rings, bracelets, armlets, and bits of gold and silver. They wear them on their arms, on their legs, round their necks, in their ears, on their bodies, on their shoulders, everywhere they can place them. The king’s son is so covered with them, that the weight of his clothes and jewellery is heavier than that of his body.
The greatest conjugal harmony seems to prevail in Siamese families. The wife is not kept secluded as in China, but shows herself everywhere. As a shadow to this picture, we must add that parents have a right to sell their children as slaves.
148.—BURMESE LADY.
The Siamese have retained intact all the superstitions of the Hindoos and the Chinese. They believe in demons, in ogres, in mermaids, &c. They have faith in amulets, philtres, and in soothsayers. They support a king, a court, and a seraglio, with its numerous progeny. A second king possesses also his palace, his army, and his mandarins. Between these two kings and the people intervene twelve different ranks of princes, several classes
149.—WOMEN OF BANKOK.
Like all degraded and servile nations, the inhabitants of Siam devote a great part of their existence to games and amusements.
150.—SIAMESE DOMESTIC.
151.—SIAMESE LADIES DINING.
M. Mouhot visited Udeng, the present capital of Cambodia. The houses of this town are made of bamboo, sometimes of planks. The longest street is nearly three-quarters of a mile long. The tillers of the soil and the hard-working classes, as well as the mandarins and the other employÉs of the government, dwell in the suburbs of the town. M. Mouhot met at every moment mandarins in litters or in hammocks followed by a swarm of slaves each carrying something; some, a red or yellow umbrella, the size of which is an indication of the rank and quality of its owner; others, boxes of betel. Horsemen, mounted on small active horses caparisoned in a costly manner and covered with
152.—TOMB OF A BONZE, AT LAOS.
The town of Bankok, the capital, was formerly called Siam, whence the name of the country.
153.—CAMBODIANS.
An absolute sovereign, looked upon as the incarnation of Buddha, rules over the kingdom of Siam, which is divided into four provinces; Siam, Siamese Laos, Siamese Cambodia, and Siamese Malacca. At one time a tributary of the Burmese Empire, the kingdom of Siam recovered its independence in 1759, and in 1768 even increased its territory by conquest.
There are scarcely any manufactures in Siam, but commerce still flourishes there, although less vigorously than formerly. The Siamese exchange their agricultural produce, their wood, their skins, cotton, rice, and preserved fish, with the Chinese, the Annamites, the Burmese, and especially with the English and Dutch possessions. Elephant’s tusks are also an important article of barter, and elephant-hunting is the calling of many of the natives.
The country is rather fertile. It is an immense plain, hilly towards the north, and intersected by a river, the Meinam, on the banks of which are placed its principal towns. Bankok is situated on this river, not far from its mouth in the gulf of Siam, and is consequently the principal port of the whole kingdom, the head-quarters of its entire trade. The periodical overflowings of the Meinam fertilize the whole of its basin.
Art and science are not entirely neglected in the kingdom of Siam. It is one of the few Asiatic countries which possess a literature of its own and some artistic productions.
Although the Buddhist religion prevails in Siam and is the state religion, yet different sects are tolerated there, and Christianity can reckon two thousand five hundred disciples.
Fig. 154 represents the young prince-royal.
The Stieng savages are subjects of the king of Siam. Their stature is a little above the average. They are powerful, their features are regular, and their well-developed foreheads show intelligence. Their only clothing is a long scarf. They are so much attached to their mountains and forests, that when away from their own country they are frequently seized with a dangerous kind of home-sickness.
154.—THE PRINCE-ROYAL OF SIAM.
These Siamese aliens of civilization work in iron and ivory; and make hatchets and swords which are sought after by collectors. Their women weave and dye the scarves they wear. They cultivate rice, maize, tobacco, vegetables, and fruit-trees. They possess neither priests nor temples, but they acknowledge the
155.—CHINESE GIRL.
