APPENDIX TO THE CHAPTER ON THE SEA-SERPENT.
The Shan.[331]
“TheShănbelongs to the snake species.”
“TheTsah Ping Shu(Work on Military Science) says: ‘In drilling an army,[332]when you arrange it like theShănexpelling its breath, its appearance is like that of a snake, but the waist is large; below there are scales, running backwards.’
“One says that its form is like that of the Ch‘i-lung, which has ears and horns and a mane of a red colour. When it exhales its breath, it forms a cloud just like a palace or tower, looking as if its walls are moving in a cloud of mist, or like a weary bird flying above. This makes everyone feel very happy until the exhalation or snorting of the breath is finished.
“There is a popular saying about building aShăntower. When the sky appears to rain you can see a resemblance of it.
“TheShi-Ki(Book of Odes or Classical Poetry) uses the expression, ‘TheShăn’sbreath forms a tower’; it is in allusion to this.
“At the present day it is said that theChi(a pheasant or francolin[333]) and the snake copulate and produce theShăn.
“The oily substance ofShăncombined with wax makes the Chinese wax candles, the fragrance of which, when burning, can be recognized for one hundred feet in all directions; and the smoke emitted from the flame forms the appearance of a tower.”
“ThePih T‘an(Familiar Stories) says that at Tang-cheu (in Shantung), in the midst of the sea, there are often clouds arise and appearlike the imperial palace, or towers of the city walls, and there is also an appearance of people, carriages, and horses busily engaged [mirage?]. They call this phenomenon ‘the market of the sea,’ while others say it is but the breath of theShăn Kiao.
“TheWu Léi Siang Kan Chisays theShănis but another sort of dragon, and can be found in some of the ponds and wells. They throw out the air, forming rain as in the locality of Wu San Yin.
“TheP‘i Ya Kwang Yaosays, when a snake transforms it becomes ashăn, in the likeness of theKiao, but without paws.”
Section II.
“The twelfth chapter ofChing Kiün Chw’ensays that Hü Ching Kiün, author of the above book, met a youth, quite handsome in his apparel. The youth pretended to be very modest, Hu Kiün knowing all the time that he was aKiaoin another form. So he told his followers, ‘I regret to think that the province of Kiang-si will often meet with the misfortune of inundation if we do not exterminate thatKiao Shăn, and are not careful to prevent its escape.’ But theShănknew what Hu Kiün was saying, and gradually slipped away to a place called Sung-sha-cheu, where he transformed himself into a yellow ox. But at the same time Ching Kiün also transformed himself into a black ox, tying a handkerchief over his neck to distinguish him from the other ox, and ordered his disciple, Shi Tai Yu, to use his sword, and thrust at the left thigh, because he had entered within the city wall, in the western part of which there is a well. By jumping this well he found a road to Tau-cheu, and once more transformed himself into a handsome youth, and by so doing got married to the daughter of a magistrate called Ku Yu, with plenty of jewels and gold. Then Ching came to see Ku Yu and said, ‘I hear that you have a very noble son-in-law. May I see him?’ Ku answered ‘Yes,’ and told him to come out. But he excused himself upon account of sickness, and hid himself. Then Ching Kiün, saying, ‘The dangerous things of the rivers and the lake are old devils, and they dare to transform themselves into human beings,’ ordered the son-in-law to transform himself into his original form, and hid himself beneath the table. Then the magistrate said, ‘Kill this,’ and they did so. Then Kiun sprinkled water on the two sons, and they were immediately transformed intoShăn. [There must be children born from the marriage.—Translator.] He advised Ku Yu that he must put them away immediately, or the whole house would be in danger of breaking.”
“TheTai Ping Kwang Kisays that the lake of Wan Tun, at Fì Chi, contains aShănwhich often fought with theShănof Lake Su. Near this lake is a place called Yao, where there lived a man called Ch‘ang Sing Shan, of great bravery, and an expert archer. He once dreamed that aShănsnake was transformed into a Taouist, and then it said tohim: ‘I am endangered by theShănof the lake of Lu. Can your honour assist me? if so I will reward you heavily. The tight white chain is me.’ Next day Sing Shan went with a youth of Yao to the shore of the lake and dreamed. He waited until the waves rose and the surf struck the shore, making a noise like thunder. He saw two oxen coming, one with a white belly and legs; then Sing Shan discharged an arrow at it, and it turned out to be aShăn. The water immediately turned into blood, and theShăn, after receiving the wound, tried to return to the lake of Lu, but died before it reached there.”
Kang Hi Dictionary.
“TheShăn Kiaobelongs to theKiaospecies, and also has the appearance of a snake. It has horns like a dragon; the mane is red below the waist; all the scales are projecting. It eats swallows, and can emit an air which appears like a tower.
“Again, any turtle when old enough may be called aShăn.”
LONDON:PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.
Footnotes:
[1]This tributary offering is a common feature in dragon legends. A good example is that given by El Edrisi in his history of the dragon destroyed by Alexander the Great in the island of Mostachin (one of the Canaries?).
[2]The latest writer on this point summarizes his views, in his opening remarks, as follows:—“The science of heraldry has faithfully preserved to modern times various phases of some of those remarkable legends which, based upon a study of natural phenomena, exhibit the process whereby the greater part of mythology has come into existence. Thus we find the solar gryphon, the solar phœnix, a demi-eagle displayed issuing from flames of fire; the solar lion and the lunar unicorn, which two latter noble creatures now harmoniously support the royal arms. I propose in the following pages to examine the myth of the unicorn, the wild, white, fierce, chaste, moon, whose two horns, unlike those of mortal creatures, are indissolubly twisted into one; the creature that endlessly fights with the lion to gain the crown or summit of heaven, which neither may retain, and whose brilliant horn drives away the darkness and evil of the night even as we find in the myth, that Venym is defended by the horn of the unicorn.”—The Unicorn; a Mythological Investigation.Robert Brown, jun., F.S.A. London, 1881.
[3]“The midgard or world-serpent we have already become tolerably well acquainted with, and recognise in him the wild tumultuous sea. Thor contended with him; he got him on his hook, but did not succeed in killing him. We also remember how Thor tried to lift him in the form of a cat. The North abounds in stories about the sea-serpent, which are nothing but variations of the original myths of the Eddas. Odin cast him into the sea, where he shall remain until he is conquered by Thor in Ragnarok.”—Norse Mythology, p. 387. R. B. Anderson, Chicago, 1879.
[4]VideAnderson.
[5]Just as even the greatest masters of fiction adapt but do not originate. Harold Skimpole and Wilkins Micawber sat unconsciously for their portraits in real life, and the most charming characters and fertile plots produced by that most prolific of all writers, A. Dumas, are mere elaborations of people and incidents with which historical memoirs provided him.
[6]Atlantis; the Antediluvian World.J. Donelly, New York, 1882. The author has amassed, with untiring labour, a large amount of evidence to prove that the island of Atlantis, in place of being a myth or fable of Plato, really once existed; was the source of all modern arts and civilization; and was destroyed in a catastrophe which he identifies with the Biblical Deluge.
[7]So also, Father Stanislaus Arlet, of the Society of Jesus, writing to the General of the Society in 1698 respecting a new Mission in Peru, and speaking of a Peruvian tribe calling themselves Canisian, says: “Having never before seen horses, or men resembling us in colour and dress, the astonishment they showed at our first appearance among them was a very pleasing spectacle to us, the sight of us terrifying them to such a degree that the bows and arrows fell from their hand; imagining, as they afterwards owned, that the man, his hat, his clothes, and the horse he rode upon, composed but one animal.”
[8]The Voyages and Adventures of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, done into English by H. C. Gent, London, 1653, p. 109. The vindication of Pinto’s reputation for veracity will doubtless one day be, to a great extent, effected, for although his interesting narrative is undoubtedly embroidered with a rich tissue of falsity, due apparently to an exaggerated credulity upon his part, and systematic deception upon that of his Chinese informants, he certainly is undeserving of the wholesale condemnation of which Congreve was the reflex when he made Foresight, addressing Sir Sampson Legend, say: “Thou modern Mandeville, Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.”—Love for Love, Act. 2, Scene 1. There are many points in his narrative which are corroborated by history and the accounts of other voyages; and it must be remembered that, although the major part of the names of places and persons which he gives are now unrecognisable, yet this may be due to alterations from the lapse of time, and from the difficulty of recognising the true original Chinese or Japanese word under those produced by the foreign mode of transliteration in vogue in those days. Thus the Port Liampoo of Pinto is now and has been for many years past only known as Ningpo, the first name being a term of convenience, used by the early Portuguese voyagers, and long since abandoned. Just as the wonderful Quinsay of Marco Polo (still known by that name in Pinto’s time) has been only successfully identified (with Hangchow-fu) through the antiquarian research of Colonel Yule. So also the titles of Chaems, Tutons, Chumbins, Aytons, Anchacy’s, which Pinto refers to (p. 108), are only with difficulty recognisable in those respectively of Tsi‘ang (a Manchu governor), Tu-tung (Lieutenant-General), Tsung-ping (Brigadier-General), Tao-tai [??] (Intendant of Circuit) and Ngan-ch‘a She-sze (Provincial Judge), as rendered by the modern sinologue Mayers in his Essay on the Chinese Government, Shanghai, 1878. The incidental references to the country, people, habits, and products, contained in the chapter describing his passage in captivity from Nanquin to Pequin are true to nature, and the apparently obviously untruthful statement which he makes of the employment by the King of Tartary of thousands of rhinoceri both as beasts of burthen and articles of food (p. 158) is explicable, I think, on the supposition that some confusion has arisen, either in translation or transcription, between rhinoceros and camel. Anyone who has seen the long strings of camels wending their way to Pekin from the various northern roads through the passes into Mongolia, would readily believe that a large transport corps of them could easily be amassed by a despotic monarch; while the vast numbers of troops to which Pinto makes reference are confirmed by more or less authentic histories.
[9]“I was myself an eye-witness of two such discoveries and helped to gather the articles together. The slanderers have long since been silenced, who were not ashamed to charge the discoverer with an imposture.”—Prof. Virchow, in Appendix I. to Schliemann’sIlios. Murray, 1880.
[10]“But ask them to credit an electric telegram, to understand a steam-engine, to acknowledge the microscopic revelations spread out before their eyes, to put faith in the Atlantic cable or the East India House, and they will tell you that you are a barbarian with blue eyes, a fan kwai, and a sayer of that which is not. The dragon and the phœnix are true, but the rotifer and the message, the sixty miles an hour, the cable, and the captive kings are false.”—Household Words, October 30th, 1855.
[11]Address delivered to the Biological Section of the British Association. Glasgow, 1876.
[12]In 1854 a communication from the Torquay Natural History Society, confirming previous accounts by Mr. Goodwin Austen, Mr. Vivian, and the Rev. Mr. McEnery, “that worked flints occurred in Kents Hole with remains of extinct species,” was rejected as too improbable for publication.
[13]“She is set down a thorough heretic, not at all to be believed, a manufacturer of unsound natural history, an inventor of false facts in science.”—Gosse,Romance of Nat. Hist., 2nd Series, p. 227.
[14]Pop. Sci. Monthly, No. 60, April 1877.
[15]“By the kindness of my friend, Mr. Bartlett, I have been enabled to examine a most beautiful Japanese carving in ivory, said to be one hundred and fifty years old, and called by the Japanesenet sukeortogle. These togles are handed down from one generation to the next, and they record any remarkable event that happens to any member of a family. This carving is an inch and a half long, and about as big as a walnut. It represents a lady in a quasi-leaning attitude, and at first sight it is difficult to perceive what she is doing; but after a while the details come out magnificently. The unfortunate lady has been seized by an octopus when bathing—for the lady wears a bathing-dress. One extended arm of the octopus is in the act of coiling round the lady’s neck, and she is endeavouring to pull it off with her right hand; another arm of the sea-monster is entwined round the left wrist, while the hand is fiercely tearing at the mouth of the brute. The other arms of the octopus are twined round, grasping the lady’s body and waist—in fact, her position reminds one very much of Laocoon in the celebrated statue of the snakes seizing him and his two sons. The sucking discs of the octopus are carved exactly as they are in nature, and the colour of the body of the creature, together with the formidable aspect of the eye, are wonderfully represented. The face of this Japanese lady is most admirably done; it expresses the utmost terror and alarm, and possibly may be a portrait. So carefully is the carving executed that the lady’s white teeth can be seen between her lips. The hair is a perfect gem of work; it is jet black, extended down the back, and tied at the end in a knot; in fact, it is so well done that I can hardly bring myself to think that it is not real hair, fastened on in some most ingenious manner; but by examining it under a powerful magnifying glass I find it is not so—it is the result of extraordinary cleverness in carving. The back of the little white comb fixed into the thick of the black hair adds to the effect of this magnificent carving of the hair. I congratulate Mr. Bartlett on the acquisition of this most beautiful curiosity. There is an inscription in Japanese characters on the underneath part of the carving, and Mr. Bartlett and myself would, of course, only be too glad to get this translated.”—Frank Buckland, inLand and Water.
[16]Max Müller,Science of Language, 4th edition, p. 163-165. London, 1864.
[17]Science of Language, p. 168.
[18]“When a naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth as are still out of the way, or by his good fortune, finds a very queer plant or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game, the word not being used in its old sense ofdiscoverybut in its modern ofcreation. As soon as the creature is found to sin against preconception, the great (mis?) guiding spirit,à prioriby name, who furnishes philosophers with their omnisciencepro re natâ, whispers that no such thingcanbe, and forthwith there is a charge of hoax. The heavens themselves have been charged with hoaxes. When Leverrier and Adams predicted a planet by calculation, it was gravely asserted in some quarters that the planet which had been calculated was nottheplanet but another which had clandestinely and improperly got into the neighbourhood of the true body. The disposition to suspect hoax is stronger than the disposition to hoax. Who was it that first announced that the classical writings of Greece and Rome were one huge hoax perpetrated by the monks in what the announcer would be as little or less inclined than Dr. Maitland to call the dark ages?”—Macmillan, 1860.
[19]Poetic Epistles, Bk. iii., Ep. 3.
[20]Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno.
[21]“Having showed the foregoing description of the mountain cow, called by the Spaniardsante[manatee?], to a person of honour, he was pleased to send it to a learned person in Holland.” This learned person discusses it and compares it with the hippopotamus, and winds up by saying, in reference to a description of the habits of the hippopotamus, as noticed at Loango by Captain Rogers, to the effect that when they are in the water they will sink to the bottom, and then walk as on dry ground, “but what he says of her sinking to the bottom in deep rivers, and walking there, if he adds, what I think he supposes, that it rises again, and comes on the land, I much question; for that such a huge body should raise itself up again (though I know whales and great fish can do) transcends the faith of J. H.”—F. J. Knapton,Collection of Voyages, vol. ii., part ii. p. 13. 4 vols., London, 1729.
[22]Historical Account of Discoveries and Travels in Asia.Hugh Murray, F.R.S.E., 3 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1820.
[23]Bk. x., chap. 53.
[24]A writer inMacmillan’s Magazinein 1860 concludes a series of objections to the canal as follows: “And the Emperor must hesitate to identify himself with an operation which might not impossibly come to be designated by posterity as ‘Napoleon’s Folly.’”
[25]The Bower Bird,Ptilonorhyncus holosericeus, and the Garden-building Bird of New Guinea,Amblyornis inornara.
[26]Recherches, &c. des Mammiferes, plate 1. Paris, 1868 to 1874.
[27]“This obstacle was a forest of oaks, not giant oaks, but the very reverse, a forest of dwarf oaks (Quercus nana). Far as the eye could reach extended the singular wood, in which no tree rose above thirty inches in height. Yet was it no thicket, no undergrowth of shrubs, but a true forest of oaks, each tree having its separate stem, its boughs, its lobed leaves, and its bunches of brown acorns.”—Capt. Mayne Reid,The War Trail, chap. lxiv.
[28]Respecting the timber trees of this tract, Dr. Ferdinand von Mueller, the Government botanist, thus writes:—“At the desire of the writer of these pages, Mr. D. Bogle measured a fallen tree ofEucalyptus amygdalina, in the deep recesses of Dandenong, and obtained for it a length of 420 feet, with proportions of width, indicated in a design of a monumental structure placed in the exhibition; while Mr. G. Klein took the measurement of aEucalyptuson the Black Spur, ten miles distant from Healesville, 480 feet high! In the State forest of Dandenong, it was found by actual measurement that an acre of ground contained twenty large trees of an apparent average height of about 350 feet.”—R. Brough Smyth,The Gold Fields of Victoria. Melbourne, 1869.
[29]“In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact. There is nothing in the mind of man that has not pre-existed in nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature?”—J. Donelly,Rangarok, p. 119. New York, 1883.
[30]“I conceive that quite a large proportion of the most profound thinkers are satisfied to exert their memory very moderately. It is, in fact, a distraction from close thought to exert the memory overmuch, and a man engaged in the study of an abstruse subject will commonly rather turn to his book-shelves for the information he requires than tax his memory to supply it.”—R. A. Proctor,Pop. Sci. Monthly, Jan. 1874.
[31]“It was through one of these happy chances (so the Brothers Grimm wrote in 1819) that we came to make the acquaintance of a peasant woman of the village of Nieder-Zwehrn, near Cassel, who told us the greater part of the Märchen of the second volume, and the most beautiful of it too. She held the old tales firmly in her memory, and would sometimes say that this gift was not granted to everyone, and that many a one could not keep anything in its proper connection. Anyone inclined to believe that tradition is easily corrupted or carelessly kept, and that therefore it could not possibly last long, should have heard how steadily she always abided by her record, and how she stuck to its accuracy. She never altered anything in repeating it, and if she made a slip, at once righted herself as soon as she became aware of it, in the very midst of her tale. The attachment to tradition among people living on in the same kind of life with unbroken regularity, is stronger than we, who are fond of change, can understand.”—Odinic Songs in Shetland.Karl Blind,Nineteenth Century, June 1879.
[32]See quotation from Gladstone,Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1879.
[33]Mr. C. P. Daly, President of the American Geographical Society, informs us, in his Annual Address [for 1880], that in one book found in the royal library at Nineveh, of the date 2000B.C., there is—
1. A catalogue of stars.
2. Enumeration of twelve constellations forming our present zodiac.
3. The intimation of a Sabbath.
4. A connection indicated (according to Mr. Perville) between the weather and the changes of the moon.
5. A notice of the spots on the sun: a fact they could only have known by the aid of telescopes, which it is supposed they possessed from observations that they have noted down of the rising of Venus, and the fact that Layard found a crystal lens in the ruins of Nineveh. (N.B.—As to the above, I must say that telescopes are not always necessary to see the spots on the sun: these were distinctly visible with the naked eye, in the early mornings, to myself and the officers of the S.S.Scotia, in the Red Sea, in the month of August of 1883, after the great volcanic disturbances near Batavia. The resulting atmospheric effects were very marked in the Red Sea, as elsewhere, the sun, when near the horizon, appearing of a pale green colour, and exhibiting the spots distinctly.)
[34]Ammianus Marcellinus (bk. xxii., ch. xv., s. 20), in speaking of the Pyramids, says: “There are also subterranean passages and winding retreats, which, it is said, men skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be lost.”
As affording a minor example of prophesy, I quote a correspondent’s communication, relating to Siam, to theNorth China Daily Newsof July 28th, 1881:—“Singularly enough the prevalence of cholera in Siam this season has been predicted for some months. The blossoming of the bamboo (which in India is considered the invariable forerunner of an epidemic) was looked upon as ominous, while the enormous quantity and high quality of the fruit produced was cited as pointing out the overcharge of the earth with matter which, though tending to the development of vegetable life, is deleterious to human. From these and other sources of knowledge open to those accustomed to read the book of nature, the prevalence of cholera, which, since 1873, has been almost unknown in Siam, was predicted and looked for; and, unlike most modern predictions, it has been certainly fulfilled. So common was the belief, that when, some months since, a foreign official in Siamese employ applied for leave of absence, it was opposed by some of the native officials on the ground that he ought to stay and take his chance of the cholera with the rest of them.”
[35]“It is now generally admitted by biologists who have made a study of the Vertebrata that birds have come down to us through the Dinosaurs, and the close affinity of the latter with recent struthious birds will hardly be questioned. The case amounts almost to a demonstration if we compare with Dinosaurs their contemporaries, the Mesozoic birds. The classes of birds and reptiles as now living are separated by a gulf so profound that a few years since it was cited by the opponents of evolution as the most important break in the animal series, and one which that doctrine could not bridge over. Since then, as Huxley has clearly shown, this gap has been virtually filled by the discoveries of bird-like reptiles and reptilian birds. Compsognathus and Archæopteryx of the old world, and Icthyornis and Hesperornis of the new, are the stepping-stones by which the evolutionist of to-day leads the doubting brother across the shallow remnant of the gulf, once thought impassable.”—Marsh.
[36]Professor Carl Vogt regards the Archæopteryx “as neither reptile nor bird, but as constituting an intermediate type. He points out that there is complete homology between the scales or spines of reptiles and the feathers of birds. The feather of the bird is only a reptile’s scale further developed, and the reptile’s scale is a feather which has remained in the embryonic condition. He considers the reptilian homologies to preponderate.”
[37]A similar habit is ascribed by the Chinese to the mammoth and to the gigantic Sivatherium (Fig. 6,p. 39), a four-horned stag, which had the bulk of an elephant, and exceeded it in height. It was remarkable for being in some respects between the stags and the pachyderms. The Dinotherium (Fig. 8), which had a trunk like an elephant, and two inverted tusks, presented in its skull a mixture of the characteristics of the elephant, hippopotamus, tapir, and dugong. Its remains occur in the Miocene of Europe.
Fig. 8.—Dinotherium.(After Figuier.)
[38]“It enters Europe early in April, spreads over France, Britain, Denmark, and the south of Sweden, which it reaches by the beginning of May. It does not enter Brittany, the Channel Islands, or the western part of England, never visiting Wales, except the extreme south of Glamorganshire, and rarely extending farther north than Yorkshire.”—A. R. Wallace,Geographical Distribution of Animals, vol. i. p. 21. London, 1876.
[39]Bible Customs in Bible Lands.By H. J. Van Lennep, D.D. 1875. Quoted inNature, March 24, 1881.
[40]Origin of Species, C. Darwin, 5th edit. 1869.
[41]Thus Mr. Wallace considers that the identity of the small fish,Galaxias attenuatus, which occurs in the mountain streams of Tasmania, with one found in those of New Zealand, the Falkland Islands, and the temperate regions of South America, cannot be considered as demonstrating a land connection between these places within the period of its specific existence. For there is a possibility that its ova have been transported from one point to another on floating ice; and for similar reasons fresh-water fish generally are unsafe guides to a classification of zoological regions. Mr. Darwin has shown (Origin of Species, andNature, vol. xviii. p. 120 and vol. xxv. p. 529) that mollusca can be conveyed attached to or entangled in the claws of migratory birds. Birds themselves are liable to be blown great distances by gales of wind. Beetles and other flying insects may be similarly transferred. Reptiles are occasionally conveyed on floating logs and uprooted trees. Mammals alone appear to be really trustworthy guides towards such a classification, from their being less liable than the other classes to accidental dispersion.
[42]Mémoires concernant l’histoire, &c. des Chinois, par les Missionaires de Pekin, vol. iv. p. 481.
[43]The Natural History of Pliny, J. Bostock and H. T. Riley, book viii. chap iv.
[44]The Voyage of the Vega, A. E. Nordenskjöld. London, 1881.
[45]On the Range of the Mammoth in Space and Time, by W. B. Dawkins,Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 1879, p. 138.
[46]The notice is taken fromLes Peuples du Caucause, ou Voyage d’Abou-el-Cassim, par M. C. D’Ohsson, p. 80, as follows:—“On trouve souvent dans la Boulgarie des os (fossils) d’une grandeur prodigieuse. J’ai vu une dent qui avait deux palmes de large sur quatre de long, et un crâne qui ressemblait à une hutte (Arabe). On y déterre des dents semblables aux défenses d’éléphants, blanche comme la neige et pesant jusqu’ à deux cents menns. On ne sait pas à quel animal elles out appartenu, mais on les transporte dans le Khoragur (Kiva), où elles se vendent à grand prix. On en fait des peignes, des vases, et d’autres objets, comme on façonne l’ivoire; toute fois cette substance est plus dure que l’ivoire; jamais elle ne se brise.”
[47]The World before the Deluge, L. Figuier. London, 1865.
[48]According to Woodward, over two thousand grinders were dredged up by the fishermen of Happisburgh in the space of thirteen years; and other localities in and about England are also noted.—Dana’sManual of Geology, p. 564.
[49]Lyell,Antiquity of Man, p. 185, 2nd edit., 1863.
[50]Fr. μάχαιρα “a sword,” and ὀδούς “a tooth.”
[51]From μαστός “a teat,” and ὀδούς “a tooth.”
[52]Palæontology, R. Owen. Edinburgh, 1860.
[53]The British Lion, W. Boyd Dawkins,Contemporary Review, 1882.
[54]The Moa was associated with other species also nearly or totally extinct: some belonging to the same genus, others to those ofPapteryx, ofNestor, and ofNotornis. One survivor of the latter was obtained by Mr. Gideon Mantell, and described by my father, Mr. John Gould, in 1850. I believe the Nestor is still, rarely, met with. Mr. Mantell is of opinion that the Moa and his congeners continued in existence long after the advent of the aboriginal Maori. Mr. Mantell discovered a gigantic fossil egg, presumably that of the Moa.
[55]A. E. Nordenskjöld,The Voyage of the ‘Vega,’vol. i. p. 272,et seq.London, 1881.
[56]Pliny,Nat. Hist., Bk. x., chap. xvii., and Bk. xxx., chap. liii.
[57]The Romance of Natural History, by P. H. Gosse, 2nd Series, London 1875.
[58]Pop. Sci. Monthly, October 1878.
[59]Excelsior, vol. iii. London, 1855.
[60]The Chinese Classics, vol. iii. p. 1, by James Legge, B.D.
[61]Inaugural Address by President, T. W. Kingsmill, North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1877.
[62]Chabas,Études sur l’Antiquité Historique, d’après les sources Égyptiennes.
[63]Subsequently to 1874.
[64]O. F. von Mollendorf,Journalof North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, No. 2, and T. W. Kingsmill, “The Border Lands of Geology and History,”Journalof North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1877.
[65]“Intercourse of China with Eastern Turkestan and the adjacent country in the second centuryB.C.,” T. W. Kingsmill,Journalof North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, No. 14.
[66]The Natural History of Pliny.Translated by J. Bostock and H. T. Biley, 6 vols. Bohn, London, 1857.
[67]Æliani de Natura Animalium, F. Jacobs. Jenæ, 1832.
[68]Géographie d’Edrisi, traduite de l’Arabe en Français, P. Amédée Jaubert, 2 vols. Paris, 1836.
[69]Phil. Trans., vol. cxlix. p. 43, 1859; vol. clxxi. p. 1,037, 1880; vol. clxxii. p. 547, 1881.
[70]Description of some New Species and Genera of Reptiles from Western Australia, discovered by John Gould, Esq.,Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. vii. p. 88, 1841.
[71]“We shall, I think, eventually more fully recognise that, as is the case with the periods of the day, each of the larger geological divisions follows the other, without any actual break or boundary; and that the minor subdivisions are like the hours on the clock, useful and conventional rather than absolutely fixed by any general cause in Nature.”—Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1875.
“With regard to stratigraphical geology, the main foundations are already laid, and a great part of the details filled in. The tendency of modern discoveries has already been, and will probably still be, to fill up those breaks, which, according to the view of many, though by no means all geologists, are so frequently assumed to exist between different geological periods and to bring about a more full recognition of the continuity of geological time. As knowledge increases, it will, I think, become more and more apparent that all existing divisions of time are to a considerable extent local and arbitrary. But, even when this is fully recognised, it will still be found desirable to retain them, if only for the sake of convenience and approximate precision.”—Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1876.
[72]“It was not until January 1832, that the second volume of thePrincipleswas published, when it was received with as much favour as the first had been. It related more especially to the changes in the organic world, while the former volume had treated mainly of the inorganic forces of nature. Singularly enough, some of the points which were seized on by his great fellow-labourer Murchison for his presidential address to this Society in 1832, as subjects for felicitation, are precisely those which the candid mind of Lyell, ever ready to attach the full value to discoveries or arguments from time to time brought forward, even when in opposition to his own views, ultimately found reason to modify. We can never, I think, more highly appreciate Sir Charles Lyell’s freshness of mind, his candour and love of truth, than when we compare certain portions of the first edition of thePrincipleswith those which occupy the same place in the last, and trace the manner in which his judicial intellect was eventually led to conclusions diametrically opposed to those which he originally held. To those acquainted only with the latest editions of thePrinciples, and with hisAntiquity of Man, it may sound almost ironical in Murchison to have written, ‘I cannot avoid noticing the clear and impartial manner in which the untenable parts of the dogmas concerning the alteration and transmutation of species and genera are refuted, and how satisfactorily the author confirms the great truth of the recent appearance of man upon our planet.’
“By the work (Principles of Geology, vol. iii.), as a whole, was dealt the most telling blow that had ever fallen upon those to whom it appears ‘more philosophical to speculate on the possibilities of the past than patiently to explore the realities of the present,’ while the earnest and careful endeavour to reconcile the former indications of change with the evidence of gradual mutation now in progress, orwhich may bein progress, received its greatest encouragement. The doctrines which Hutton and Playfair had held and taught assumed new and more vigorous life as better principles were explained by their eminent successor, and were supported by arguments which, as a whole, were incontrovertible.”—Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1876.
“But, as Sir Roderick Murchison has long ago proved, there are parts of the record which are singularly complete, and in those parts we have the proof of creation without any indication of development. The Silurian rocks, as regards oceanic life, are perfect and abundant in the forms they have preserved.Yet there are no fish.The Devonian age followed tranquilly and without a break, and in the Devonian sea, suddenly, fish appear, appear in shoals, and in form of the highest and most perfect type.”—The Duke of Argyll,Primeval Man, p. 45, London, 1869.
[73]T. Mellard Reade, “Limestone as an Index of Geological Time,”Proceedings, Royal Society, London, vol. xxviii., p. 281.
[74]Scientific American, Supplement, February 1881.
[75]Proceedings, Royal Society, vol. xv. No. 82, 1866.
[76]Athenæum, August 25, 1860, &c.
[77]The mass of astronomers, however, deny that this is possible to any very great extent.
[78]James Croll, F.R.S., &c.,Climate and Time in their Geological Relations.
[79]Figs.19and21are taken, by permission of Edmund Christy, Esq., fromReliquiæ Aquitanicæ, &c., London, 1875.
[80]In some cases as much as 150 feet.
[81]“Starting from the opinion generally accepted among geologists, that man was on the earth at the close of the Glacial epoch, Professor B. F. Mudge adduces evidence to prove that the antiquity of man cannot be less than 200,000 years.
“His argument, as given in the Kansas City Review of Science, is about as follows:—
“After the Glacial epoch, geologists fix three distinct epochs, the Champlain, the Terrace, and the Delta, all supposed to be of nearly equal lengths.
“Now we have in the delta of the Mississippi a means of measuring the duration of the third of these epochs.
“For a distance of about two hundred miles of this delta are seen forest growths of large trees, one after the other, with interspaces of sand. There are ten of these distinct forest growths, which have begun and ended one after the other. The trees are the bald cypress (Taxodium) of the Southern States, and some of them were over twenty-five feet in diameter. One contained over five thousand seven hundred annual rings. In some instances these huge trees have grown over the stumps of others equally large, and such instances occur in all, or nearly all, of the ten forest beds. This gives to each forest a period of 10,000 years.
“Ten such periods give 100,000 years, to say nothing of the time covered by the interval between the ending of one forest and the beginning of another, an interval which in most cases was considerable.
“‘Such evidence,’ writes Professor Mudge, ‘would be received in any court of law as sound and satisfactory. We do not see how such proof is to be discarded when applied to the antiquity of our race.
“‘There is satisfactory evidence that man lived in the Champlain epoch. But the Terrace epoch, or the greater part of it, intervenes between the Champlain and the Delta epochs, thus adding to my 100,000 years.
“‘If only as much time is given to both those epochs as to the Delta period, 200,000 years is the total result.’”—Popular Science Monthly, No. 91, vol. xvi. No. 1, p. 140, November 1878.
[82]Such as the destruction of the Alexandrine Library on three distinct occasions, (1) upon the conquest of Alexandria by Julius Cæsar,B.C.48; (2) inA.D.390; and, (3) by Amrou, the general of the Caliph Omar, in 640, who ordered it to be burnt, and so supplied the baths with fuel for six months. Again, the destruction of all Chinese books by order of Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, the founder of the Imperial branch of the Tsin dynasty, and the first Emperor of United China; the only exceptions allowed being those relating to medicine, divination, and husbandry. This took place in the year 213B.C.
[83]The Chinese have used composite blocks (wood engraved blocks with many characters, analogous to our stereotype plates) from an early period. May not the brick-clay tablets preserved in the Imperial Library at Babylon have been used for striking off impressions on some plastic material, just as rubbings may be taken from the stone drums in China: may not the cylinders with inscribed characters have been used in some way or other as printing-rollers for propagating knowledge or proclamations?
[84]As, for example, the old canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, in reference to which Herodotus says (Euterpe, 158), “Neco was the son of Psammitichus, and became King of Egypt: he first set about the canal that leads to the Red Sea, which Darius the Persian afterwards completed. Its length is a voyage of four days, and in width it was dug so that two triremes might sail rowed abreast. The water is drawn into it from the Nile, and it enters it a little above the city Bubastis, passes near the Arabian city Patumos, and reaches to the Red Sea.” In the digging of which one hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians perished in the reign of Neco.
[85]The co-called tanks at Aden, reservoirs constructed one below the other, in a gorge near the cantonments, are as perfect now as they were when they left the hand of the contractor or royal engineer in the time of Moses.
[86]In the 29th year of the Emperor Kwei [B.C.1559] they chiselled through mountains and tunnelled hills, according to the Bamboo Books.
[87]An interesting line of investigation might be opened up as to the origin of inventions and the date of their migrations. The Chinese claim the priority of many discoveries, such as chess, printing, issue of bank-notes, sinking of artesian wells, gunpowder, suspension bridges, the mariner’s compass, &c. &c. I extract two remarkable wood-cuts from theSan Li T’u, one appended here showing the origin of our college cap; the other, in the chapter on the Unicorn, appearing to illustrate the fable of the Sphynx.
Fig. 22.—Royal Diademof the Chen Dynasty.(From the San Li T’u.)
I also give a series of engravings, reduced facsimiles of those contained in a celebrated Chinese work on antiquities, showing the gradual evolution of the so-called Grecian pattern or scroll ornamentation, and origination of some of the Greek forms of tripods.
[88]“The old Troglodytes, pile villagers, and bog people, prove to be quite a respectable society. They have heads so large that many a living person would be only too happy to possess such.”—A. Mitchell,The Past in the Present, Edinburgh, 1880.
[89]I have given in the annexed plates a few examples of the early hieroglyphics on which the modern Chinese system of writing is based, selected from a limited number collected by the early Jesuit fathers in China, and contained in theMémoirs concernant l’Histoire, &c. des Chinois, par les Missionaires de Pekin, vol. i., Paris, 1776. The modern Chinese characters conveying the same idea are attached, and their derivation from the pictorial hieroglyphics, by modification or contraction, is in nearly all cases obvious.
[90]“The Porcelain Tower of Nankin, once one of the seven wonders of the world, can now only be found piecemeal in walls of peasants’ huts.”—Gutzlaff,Hist. China, vol. i. p. 372.
[91]The outer casing of the pyramid of Cheops, which Herodotus (Euterpe, 125) states to have still exhibited in his time an inscription, telling how much was expended (one thousand six hundred talents of silver) in radishes, onions, and garlic for the workmen, has entirely disappeared; as also, almost completely, the marble casing of the adjacent pyramid of Sen-Saophis. According to tradition the missing marbles in each instance were taken to build palaces with in Cairo.
[92]“The work of destruction was carried on methodically. From the Caspian Sea to the Indus, the Mongols ruined, within four years, more than four centuries of continuous labour have since restored. The most flourishing cities became a mass of ruins: Samarkand, Bokhara, Nizabour, Balkh, and Kandahar shared in the same destruction.”—Gutzlaff,Hist. China, vol. i. p. 358.
[93]“An army of 700,000 Mongols met half the number of Mahommedans.”—Ibid.p. 357.
[94]Those interested in the subject may read with great advantage the section on dynamical geology in Dana’s valuable manual. He points out the large amount of wear accomplished by wind carrying sand in arid regions, by seeds falling in some crevice, and bursting rocks open through the action of the roots developed from their sprouting, to say nothing of the more ordinarily recognized destructive agencies of frost and rain, carbonic acid resulting from vegetable decomposition, &c.
[95]Darwin, inVegetable Mould and Earth-worms, has shown that earthworms play a considerable part in burying old buildings, even to a depth of several feet.
[96]Rev. T. K. Cheyne, Article “Deluge,”Encyclopædia Britannica, 1877. François Lenormant, “The Deluge, its Traditions in Ancient Histories,”Contemporary Review, Nov., 1879.
[97]Bunsen estimates that 20,000 years were requisite for the formation of the Chinese language. This, however, is not conceded by other philologists.
[98]Rawlinson quotes the African type on the Egyptian sculptures as being identical with that of the negro of the present day.
[99]“While the tradition of the Deluge holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the Aryan race, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many cosmogenic speculations, have not afforded one, even distant, allusion to this cataclysm. When the Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the Deluge of Deucalion, their reply was that they had been preserved from it as well as from the conflagration produced by Phaeton; they even added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance to that event, as there had been several local catastrophes resembling it.”—Lenormant,Contemporary Review, November 1879.
[100]François Lenormant, “The Deluge; its Traditions in Ancient Histories,”Contemporary Review, vol. xxxvi. p. 465.
[101]Here several verses are wanting.
[102]“The water of the twilight at break of day,” one of the personifications of rain.
[103]The god of thunder.
[104]The god of war and death.
[105]The Chaldæo-Assyrian Hercules.
[106]The superior heaven of the fixed stars.
[107]Vases of the measure called in HebrewSeäh. This relates to a detail of the ritualistic prescriptions for sacrifice.
[108]These metaphorical expressions appear to designate the rainbow.
[109]The god of epidemics.
[110]It is probably as much from a superstitious sentiment as upon merely physical grounds that many of the deserted cities in Asia have been abandoned; while, as a noticeable instance, we may quote Gour, the ruined capital of Bengal, which is computed to have extended from fifteen to twenty miles along the bank of the river, and three in depth. The native tradition is that it was struck by the wrath of the gods in the form of an epidemic which slew the whole population. Another case is the reputed presence of a ruined city, in the vicinity of the populous city of Nanking, and at some distance from the right bank of the river Yangtsze, of which the walls only remain, and of the history of which those in the vicinity profess to have lost all record.
[111]i.e.(according to the Historical Records) a carriage to travel along the dry land, a boat to travel along the water, a sledge to travel through miry places, and, by using spikes, to travel on the hills.
[112]Balfour,North China Daily News, Feb. 11, 1881.
[113]Dr. Schliemann found a vase in the lowest strata of his excavations at Hissarlik with an inscription in an unknown language.
Six years ago the Orientalist E. Burnouf declared it to be in Chinese, for which he was generally laughed at at the time.
The Chinese ambassador at Berlin, Li Fang-pau, has read and translated the inscription, which states that three pieces of linen gauze are packed in the vase for inspection.
The Chinese ambassador fixes the date of the inscription at about 1200B.C., and further states that the unknown characters so frequently occurring on the terra cotta are also in the Chinese language, which would show that at this remote period commercial intercourse existed between China and the eastern shores of Asia Minor and Greece.—Pop. Sci. Monthly, No. 98, p. 176, June 1880.
[114]Pierre Bergeron suggests that Solomon’s fleets, starting from Ezion-geber (subsequently Berenice and now Alcacu), arrived at Babelmandeb, and then divided, one portion going to Malacca, Sumatra, or Java, the other to Sofala, round Africa, and returning by way of Cadiz and the Mediterranean to Joppa.
[115]There are various accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa in old times. For example, Herodotus (Melpomene, 42): “Libya shows itself to be surrounded by water, except so much of it as borders upon Asia. Neco, King of Egypt, was the first whom we know of that proved this; he, when he had ceased digging the canal leading from the Nile to the Arabian gulf, sent certain Phœnicians in ships with orders to sail back through the pillars of Hercules into the Northern Sea, and so to return to Egypt. The Phœnicians accordingly, setting out from the Red Sea, navigated the Southern Sea; when autumn came they went ashore, and sowed the land, by whatever part of Libya they happened to be sailing, and waited for harvest; then, having reaped the corn, they put to sea again. When two years had thus passed, in the third, having doubled the pillars of Hercules, they arrived in Egypt, and related what to me does not seem credible, but may to others, that as they sailed round Libya, they had the sun on the right hand.” Again, Pliny tells us (Book ii. chap. lxvii, Translation by Bostock and Riley), “While the power of Carthage was at its height, Hanno published an account of a voyage which he made from Gades to the extremity of Arabia: besides, we learn from Cornelius Nepos, that one Eudoxus, a contemporary of his, when he was flying from King Lathyrus, set out from the Arabian Gulf, and was carried as far as Gades. And long before him, Cœlius Antipater informs us, that he had seen a person who had sailed from Spain to Ethiopia for the purposes of trade. The same Cornelius Nepos, when speaking of the northern circumnavigation, tells us that Q. Metellus Celer, the colleague of L. Afranius in the consulship, but then proconsul in Gaul, had a present made to him by the King of the Suevi, of certain Indians, who, sailing from India for the purposes of commerce, had been driven by tempests into Germany.”
Ptolemy Lathyrus commenced his reign 117B.C.and reigned for thirty-six years. Cornelius Nepos is supposed to have lived in the century previous to the Christian era, and Cœlius Antipater to have been born in the middle of the second centuryB.C.
[116]Edrisi compiled, under the instruction of Roger, King of Sicily, Italy, Lombardy, and Calabria, an exhaustive geographical treatise comprising information derived from numerous preceding works, principally Arabic, and from the testimony of all the geographers of the day.
Videthe Translation into French by M. Amédée Jaubert, 2 vols. 4to, Paris, 1836, included in theRecueil de Voyages et de Mémoires publié par la Société de Géographie.
“Ce pays touch celui de Wac Wac où sont deux villes misérables et mal peuplées à cause de la rareté des subsistances et du peu de ressource en tout genre; l’une se nomme Derou et l’autre Nebhena; dans son voisinage est un grand bourg nommé Da’rgha. Les naturels sont noirs, de figure hideuse, de complexion difformé; leur langage est une espèce de sifflement. Ils sont absolument nus et sont peu visités (par les étrangers). Ils vivent de poissons, de coquillages, et de tortues. Ils sont (comme il vient d’être dit) voisins de l’ile de Wac Wac dont nous reparlerons, s’il plait à Dieu. Chacun de ces pays et de ces iles est situé sur un grand golfe, on n’y trouve ni or, ni commerce, ni navire, ni bêtes de somme.”—El Edrisi, vol. i. p. 79.
[117]TheAgave Americane, which substance has as many uses among the Mexicans as the bamboo (the iron of China) among the Chinese, or the camel among nomads.
[118]The Thousand and One Nights, vol. iii. chap. xxv. p. 480, Note 32, E. W. Lane, London, 1877.
A similar account is given by Quazvini. SeeScriptorum Arabum de Rebus Indicis, J. Gildemeister, Bonn, 1838.
[119]The diggings are seventy to one hundred and fifty miles from Port Darwin. There is gold on Victoria River.
Jacks, in his report to the Queensland Government, published March or April of 1880, reports no paying gold in Yorke’s peninsula.
One hundred miles from Port Darwin and twenty-six miles from the Adelaide River a new rush occurred in July 1880: nuggets from 70 to 80 oz. of common occurrence; one found weighed 187 oz.
[120]Scientific American, Aug. 14, 1880.
[121]E. J. Elliott, “The Age of Cave Dwellers in America,”Pop. Sci. Monthly, vol. xv. p. 488.
[122]Scientific American, Jan. 24, 1880.
[123]Macmillan’s Magazine, quoted inPop. Sci. Monthly, No. 82.
[124]Œuvres, I. 7, pp. 197, 198.
[125]Two Voyages to New England, p. 124; London, 1673.
[126]Robert Knox,The Races of Men; London, 1850.
[127]Principles of Geology, chap. xii.
[128]Atlantis, by Ignatius Donelly; New York, 1882.
[129]It is given in great detail by Mr. Donelly; want of space forbids my including it.
[130]I use the text of the edition of Diodorus Siculus of L. Rhodomanus, Amsterdam, 1746.
[131]“Professor Virchow considers this an example how certain artistical or technical forms are developed simultaneously, without any connection or relation between the artists or craftsmen.”—Preface toIlios, Schliemann. Murray, 1880.
[132]Knivet’s description of the West Indies,Harris’ Voyages, vol. i. p. 705.
[133]T. Wright,Marco Polo, p. 267. Bohn, 1854.
[134]Harris’ Voyages, vol. i. p. 859.
[135]Dr. J. le Conte describes a ceremonial of cremation among the Cocopa Indians of California, and it is an ancient practice among the Chinese, dating back beyond the Greek and Roman historical periods.
[136]British Association, 1871.
[137]Staunton,China, vol. ii. p. 455.
[138]Humboldt,Researches in America, English Translation, vol. i. p. 133.
[139]“In turning to the consideration of the primitive works of art of the American continent ... when in the bronze work of the later iron period, imitative forms at length appear, they are chiefly the snake and dragon shapes and patterns, borrowed seemingly by Celtic and Teutonic wanderers, with the wild fancies of their mythology, from the far eastern land of their birth.”—D. Wilson,Prehistoric Man, 1862.