6.Authors are not at all agreed respecting the period at which this wall was erected. Gibbon, relying apparently on the testimony of Duhalde (Description de la China, tom. ii. p. 45) and Deguignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 59), gives the third century before the Christian era as the date of its construction, and assigns it a length of fifteen hundred miles.—(History, vol. iv. p. 361.) Du Pauw, an ingenious but conceited and coxcombical writer, makes no objection to the antiquity of the work, but reduces its length to about four hundred and fifty miles; and this without citing any authority, or even stating his reasons, except that he does not choose to consider the western branch, which, he tells us, is built of earth, worthy the name of a wall.—(Recherch. Phil. sur les Egypt. et Chin. tom. ii. p. 77-79.) For my own part, I am inclined to agree with those writers who think it an entirely modern work, erected since the thirteenth century; for the silence of Marco Polo appears to me absolutely decisive. Du Pauw’s supposition that he could have entered China from Mongolia, that is, passed through the wall, and lived eighteen years in the country, which he traversed in every direction, without once hearing of its existence, is too absurd even for refutation. That he abstained from describing it, lest he should excite a suspicion of the truth of his narrative, though somewhat more probable perhaps, does not upon the whole seem credible. If it existed in his time, I can account for his silence, or rather for the absence of all mention of it in his travels, as they at present exist, only by supposing that the passage in which this extraordinary work was alluded to, was, like many other passages, omitted from ignorant incredulity by transcribers, and so lost. Thus, too, we may account for no mention of tea being found in his travels.
6.Authors are not at all agreed respecting the period at which this wall was erected. Gibbon, relying apparently on the testimony of Duhalde (Description de la China, tom. ii. p. 45) and Deguignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 59), gives the third century before the Christian era as the date of its construction, and assigns it a length of fifteen hundred miles.—(History, vol. iv. p. 361.) Du Pauw, an ingenious but conceited and coxcombical writer, makes no objection to the antiquity of the work, but reduces its length to about four hundred and fifty miles; and this without citing any authority, or even stating his reasons, except that he does not choose to consider the western branch, which, he tells us, is built of earth, worthy the name of a wall.—(Recherch. Phil. sur les Egypt. et Chin. tom. ii. p. 77-79.) For my own part, I am inclined to agree with those writers who think it an entirely modern work, erected since the thirteenth century; for the silence of Marco Polo appears to me absolutely decisive. Du Pauw’s supposition that he could have entered China from Mongolia, that is, passed through the wall, and lived eighteen years in the country, which he traversed in every direction, without once hearing of its existence, is too absurd even for refutation. That he abstained from describing it, lest he should excite a suspicion of the truth of his narrative, though somewhat more probable perhaps, does not upon the whole seem credible. If it existed in his time, I can account for his silence, or rather for the absence of all mention of it in his travels, as they at present exist, only by supposing that the passage in which this extraordinary work was alluded to, was, like many other passages, omitted from ignorant incredulity by transcribers, and so lost. Thus, too, we may account for no mention of tea being found in his travels.
Bell was, moreover, informed by the Chinese that this wall was completed within the space of five years, every sixth man in the empire having been compelled to work at it or find a substitute. But if the date of its erection is altogether uncertain, we may very well be permitted to indulge our skepticism respecting such circumstances as tend to increase the marvellousness of the undertaking. It is far more probable that it is the work of ages, and that numerous and long interruptions occurred in the prosecution of the design. With respect to its utility, I likewise dissent altogether from the opinion of our traveller, who, in comparing it with the pyramids, styles the latter “a work of vanity.” Had Bell believed, as I do, that the pyramids were temples, he would, however, have been the last man in the world to have thus characterized them; but with respect to the long wall, it may be proved to have been not only useless, but pernicious, since the imaginary security it afforded encouraged those unwarlike habits to which the Chinese are naturally addicted; and thus, when the Tartars overleaped this contemptibleobstacle to valour, and challenged them to defend their empire by arms, they discovered that soldiers are the only wall which a wise people should oppose to its enemies, all other defences being found upon trial to be utterly vain. No country, no, not even Hindostan itself, has been more frequently conquered than China; nor has any region of the earth been more frequently desolated and drenched with blood by civil wars and rebellions; and if ever circumstances should render it necessary for us to extend our conquests in Asia beyond the Burrampooter on the north-east, it would be seen with what ease the Hindoo Sipahees, who subdued Tippoo Sultan, the Rohillas, Rajpoots, Patans, and Burmese, would rout and subdue the feeble and inefficient troops of China.
But to proceed with our traveller. All the way to Pekin they observed terrible marks of the destructive power of earthquakes in these countries; many of the towns having been half-destroyed by one which had happened the preceding year,[7]when great numbers of people were buried beneath the ruins. The country appeared to be well cultivated, and the towns and villages numerous, but not in any remarkable degree. They reached Pekin on the 18th of November.
7.Du Pauw shows by his use of this passage how little his accuracy is to be depended on. Bell says, “above one-half being thereby laid in ruins;” which our sophist thus translates into French:—“Il ne restepoint une habitation sur pied!” and then audaciously refers to his authority, which he styles “Antermony Journal.”
7.Du Pauw shows by his use of this passage how little his accuracy is to be depended on. Bell says, “above one-half being thereby laid in ruins;” which our sophist thus translates into French:—“Il ne restepoint une habitation sur pied!” and then audaciously refers to his authority, which he styles “Antermony Journal.”
Bell had now reached the goal of his wishes, and upon the whole was not disappointed. Long accustomed to the sight of savages immersed in ignorance and barbarism, he found the Chinese, by comparison, highly civilized. They drank tea, cultivated fine fruits, manufactured excellent silks, paper, and porcelain, and accumulated considerable wealth; but, before they were taught by the Jesuits, scarcely understood sufficient astronomy to enable them to calculatean eclipse, were ignorant of the art of founding cannon, of building chimneys, of making clocks and watches; and, what was infinitely worse than all this, they were under so little moral restraint that men incapable of maintaining a family married several wives with the execrable design of exposing or murdering their offspring. The existence of foundling hospitals in civilized countries proves that there everywhere exist individuals to whom the offshoots of their own being are objects of no solicitude; ancient nations, too, sometimes exposed weak or deformed children; but no people, as far as I have been able to discover, ever arrived at that pitch of depravity which distinguishes the Chinese, “among whom,” says Sir George Staunton, “habit seems to have familiarized a notion that life only becomes truly precious, and inattention to it criminal, after it has continued long enough to be endowed with a mind and sentiment; but that mere dawning existence may be suffered to be lost without scruple, though it cannot without reluctance.”
In the fine arts the Chinese have made but little progress, having no knowledge of sculpture, and very little of painting. Their literature, it is very clear, contains none of those splendid creations of genius which we might expect to find among a people partly civilized during so many ages, and which actually exist in the languages of Persia and Hindostan. Their popular religion is the grossest and most corrupt form of Buddhism; and even this, as well as their philosophy and arts, such as they are, they originally borrowed from Hindostan, which seems in antiquity to have been the great workshop where all the fantastic systems, religious and philosophical, which were current among the heathen were fabricated.
Captain Ismailoff seems, like Lord Amherst, to have felt a peculiar antipathy to the practice of bowing nine times before the Chinese emperor; but atlength, after many struggles with their prejudices, consented to conform to ancient usage. The first audience was granted him at one of the emperor’s country palaces, where, when he arrived, though the morning was cold and frosty, he found all the ministers of state and officers belonging to the court seated cross-legged upon their fur cushions in the open air,—an exhibition probably intended to serve as a reproof to the insolent barbarian who could object to bow nine times before a prince at whose door the greatest men in the Celestial Empire were contented to sit cross-legged in the frost! Nothing of that magnificence which Marco Polo found at the court of Kublai Khan was discoverable in that of Kamhi, where, on the contrary, the only circumstances truly remarkable were the extreme plainness of every thing and the affability and calm good sense of the aged monarch, who, in insisting on the observance of ancient forms and ceremonies, was actuated, it was clear, by no motives of paltry vanity.
Though Gibbon, with all his disposition to skepticism, allowed to Pekin a population of two millions, it would appear from Bell’s account, who says he rode round it at an easy trot in four hours, to be inferior to London in size; and no one who is acquainted with the form of Chinese houses, which are never more than one story high, and who reflects upon the extent of the imperial gardens, together with all the other gardens included within the walls, will doubt for a moment that it is vastly less populous. Upon the accounts of the Chinese themselves no reliance whatever can be placed. They are greater proficients in lying than the ancient Cretans; and on the subject of population have deluded European travellers with fables so monstrous, that there is nothing in Gulliver more repugnant to common sense. To maintain the one-half of the population to which their empire makes pretensions would demand a progress in civilization and the arts of lifeof which hitherto they have not even dreamed; but a paper population costs nothing. Three hundred and thirty-three millions are as easily written as one hundred and nineteen millions. But if we reflect for a moment on the vast deserts, the barren mountains, the impenetrable woods which the Jesuits, when scattered and terrified into their senses by persecution, found in almost every part of this richly-cultivated country, and were enabled to conceal themselves in for months, we shall perhaps be disposed to conclude, that in proportion to its extent China is less populous than Hindostan, which yet does not, in all probability, contain one-fourth of the population it might be made to support if properly cultivated.
The object of the mission, which indeed seems to have been of little importance, having been accomplished, the ambassador prepared to depart. The aged emperor, however, who appears to have possessed a thoroughly benevolent and polished mind, was desirous of presenting them before they took their leave with the splendid spectacle of a Mongol hunt, of such a one at least as could be represented in a park of two or three days’ journey in extent. On the 21st of February, therefore, the day appointed for the hunt, horses were brought them at one o’clock in the morning, the Chinese resolving that no time should be lost. They reached the royal park about daybreak, where, in a summer-house erected in the forest, they found the emperor, who had risen long before their arrival. Here they breakfasted. Before the south front of the summer-house there was a large canal, with several fish-ponds filled with clear water, which greatly beautified the scene; and all around, at convenient distances, stood a thousand tents in which the courtiers had slept.
“The signal was then given,” says Bell, “that the emperor was coming; upon which all the great men drew up in lines, from the bottom of the stairs tothe road leading to the forest, all on foot, dressed in their hunting-habits, the same with those used by the officers and cavalry of the army when in the field, and armed with bows and arrows. We had a proper place assigned us, and made our bows to his majesty, who returned a gracious smile, with signs to follow him. He was seated cross-legged in an open machine carried by four men with long poles rested on their shoulders. Before him lay a fowling-piece, a bow, and a sheaf of arrows. This has been his hunting equipage for some years, since he left off riding.... As soon as the emperor had passed, the company mounted and followed him at some distance till we came into the open forest, where all formed into a semicircle, in the centre of which was the emperor, having on his left-hand (the place of honour in China) about eight or ten of his sons and grandsons, and the ambassador on his right, about fifty paces distant. Close by him were the master of the chase with some greyhounds and the grand falconer with his hawks. I could not but admire the beauty of these fine birds. Many of them were as white as doves, having one or two black feathers in their wings or tails. They are brought from Siberia, or places to the north of the river Amoor.
“Our wings being extended, there were many hares started, which the company endeavoured to drive towards the emperor, who killed many of them with arrows as they passed; those he missed he made a sign to some of the princes to pursue, who also killed several of them with arrows; but no other person was permitted to draw a bow or stir from the line.
“From the open field we continued our route westward to a place among thickets and tall reeds, where we sprung a number of pheasants, partridges, and quails. His majesty then laid aside his bow and arrows, and carried a hawk on his hand, which heflew as occasion offered. The hawks generally raked in the pheasants while flying; but if they took to the reeds or bushes they soon caught them.
“After proceeding about two or three miles farther into the forest we came to a tall wood, where we found several sorts of deer. The young men went in and beat the woods, while the rest of the company remained without. We saw much game pass us, but nobody drew a bow until the emperor had killed a stag, which he did very dexterously with a broad-headed arrow; after which the princes had leave to kill several bucks, among which was one of that species that bears the musk, calledkaberdain Siberia.
“We had now been six hours on horseback, and I reckon had travelled about fifteen English miles, but no end of the forest yet appeared. We turned short from this wood southward, till coming to some marshes overgrown with tall reeds we roused a great many wild boars; but as it was not the season for killing them they all escaped. The hunting of these fierce animals is reckoned the most dangerous of all kinds of sport except the chase of lions and tigers. Every one endeavoured to avoid them, and several of them ran furiously through the thickest troops of horse. The emperor was so cautious as to have a company of men armed with lances to guard his machine.
“We continued the sport till about four o’clock, when we came to a high artificial mount of a square figure, raised in the middle of a plain, on the top of which were pitched about ten or twelve tents for the imperial family. This mount had several winding paths leading to the top, planted on each side with rows of trees in imitation of nature. To the south was a large basin of water with a boat upon it, from whence, I suppose, the earth has been taken that formed this mount. At some distance from the mount tents were erected for the people of distinctionand officers of the court. About two hundred yards from itwe were lodged in some clean huts covered with reeds.”—[No mark that Kamhi held the czar’s ambassador in very high estimation.]—“The emperor, from his situation, had a view of all the tents and a great way farther into the forest. The whole scene made a very pretty appearance.”
When they had dined and been interrogated respecting the degree of admiration with which they had beheld the feats of the emperor and his sons, which was of course superlative, the ambassador was informed that he was to be entertained with a tiger-hunt, or rather “baiting,” as our traveller terms it; three animals of that species having been kept for some time in a cage for that purpose. “The hill where the emperor’s tent stood was surrounded with several ranks of guards armed with long spears. A guard also was placed before the ambassador’s and the rest of the tents, to secure the whole encampment from the fury of these fierce animals. The first was let out by a person mounted on a fleet horse, who opened the door of the coop by means of a rope tied to it. The tiger immediately left his cage, and seemed much pleased to find himself at liberty. The horseman rode off at full speed, while the tiger (poor fellow!) was rolling himself upon the grass. At last he rose, growled, and walked about. The emperor fired twice at him with bullets, but the distance being considerable missed him, though the pieces were well pointed. Upon which his majesty sent to the ambassador to try his piece upon him; which being charged with a single ball, he walked towards the animal, accompanied by ten men armed with spears, in case of accidents, till, being at a convenient distance, he took his aim and killed him on the spot.”
The second and third tigers were despatched in a short time; and the sportsmen, pluming themselves upon their magnificent achievements, sat down in great good-humour to supper, as men always dowhen they have performed any glorious action. The skin of the tiger slain by the ambassador was sent him by the emperor, who observed, that by the laws of hunting he had a right to it. The sport of the next day differed very little from the preceding. They continued, however, advancing through the forest without discovering any end to it, and passed the night in a temple near another imperial summer-house. The extent of this immense park, which was all enclosed by a high wall, may enable us to form some idea of the quantity of useless land in China; for besides the number of similar enclosures belonging to the imperial family, we may be sure that, as far as possible, all the rich and great imitate the example of the sovereign.
The ambassador now received his audience of leave, and, after making several visits of ceremony, and receiving the curious but not valuable presents intended for the czar, departed from Pekin. Their route from the capital to the Great Wall, and thence across the deserts of Mongolia to Selinguisky, though not precisely the same as that by which they had come, afforded but few new objects, and was rendered interesting by no striking incidents. The Baikal Lake being still frozen when they reached it, they traversed it on light sledges upon the ice. They then embarked upon the Angara, and descended by water to Yeniseisk. Proceeding thence by land, they soon arrived upon the banks of the river Ket, where they again took to their boats; and sailing down this melancholy stream, bordered on both sides by the most gloomy forests, immerged into the mighty stream of the Obe. They now sailed down this river to its confluence with the Irtish, another noble stream, against the current of which they made their way with much difficulty to Tobolsk. Here they quitted their boats, and continued their journey on sledges. Winter was rapidly invading the country. Snow, cold winds, frost, and short days conspiredto render their movements irksome; but they still pushed on rapidly, and on the 5th of January, 1722, arrived at Moscow, where they found the czar and all his court, who had recently removed thither from Petersburg.
Peter, surrounded by his courtiers, the general officers, and the nobility and gentry from all parts of the empire, was making great preparations for the celebration of the festivals appointed to be solemnized in commemoration of the peace concluded at Aland in 1721, between Russia and Sweden, after a war of more than twenty years, when our traveller arrived; and as he appears greatly to have admired the policy of Peter on most occasions, he was particularly gratified at the present exhibition. He observes that Peter, even in his amusements and times of diversion, made use of all possible means of inspiring his people with a love of what was useful; and as the Russians had a peculiar aversion to shipping, his principal aim in the shows exhibited at Moscow was to dispel that prejudice, by impressing upon their minds that it was owing to his naval power that the peace had been obtained.
“The triumphant entry,” says Bell, “was made from a village about seven miles from Moscow, called Seswedsky. The first of the cavalcade was a galley finely carved and gilt, in which the rowers plied their oars as on the water. The galley was commanded by the high-admiral of Russia. Then came a frigate of sixteen small brass guns, with three masts, completely rigged, manned with twelve or fourteen youths habited like Dutch skippers, in black velvet, who trimmed the sails, and performed all the manœuvres of a ship at sea. Then came most richly-decorated barges, wherein sat the empress and the ladies of the court. There were also pilot-boats heaving the lead, and above thirty other vessels, pinnaces, wherries, &c., each filled with masqueraders in the dresses of different nations. It was in themonth of February, at which time all the ground was covered with snow, and all the rivers frozen. All these machines were placed on sledges, and were drawn by horses through all the principal streets of Moscow. The ship required above forty horses to draw it. In order to its passing under the gates the topmasts were struck, and, when passed, set up again; besides which, the gateway was dug as low as was necessary for admitting it to pass.”
As soon as these festivals were concluded, Peter, who had been invited into Persia with an army by the shah, who required his aid against the rebellious Afghans, prepared to march southward; and Bell, who was thought to understand something of Persian manners, having spent some time in the country, was engaged by the czar’s chief physician to accompany the expedition. Accordingly, the troops having been embarked on the Moskwa, they descended by water to the Caspian Sea, and made for the shores of Daghestan, where they landed and encamped. They then proceeded along the seashore to Derbend, where the fleet containing the provisions, stores, &c. for the army was wrecked upon the beach. This gave Peter a plausible excuse for returning home without affording the shah the desired aid. Indeed, the whole expedition appears to have been a mere piece of treachery got up for the purpose of obtaining possession of Derbend; for “the emperor determined,” says Bell, “to leave things in the state they were in, and to return again to Astrakhan by the same way we came,leaving a garrison at Derbend sufficient to secure the advantage he had gained.”
We now lose sight of our traveller for fifteen years, the whole of which, however, he spent in Russia. In 1737 the war with Turkey, which had begun in 1734, began to grow disagreeable to the Russian court, the Ottomites, in spite of their barbarism, being more obstinate in the field than their polished enemies of the north had anticipated. Under these circumstances,it was thought advisable to negotiate a peace; but as the Turks made no proposals, and as in time of war no subject of Russia, or Germany, the ally of Russia, was admitted into the dominions of the sultan, Bell, who appears to have been greatly respected both for his character and abilities, was prevailed upon, “at the earnest desires of Count Osterman, the chancellor of Russia, and of Mr. Rondeau, his Britannic majesty’s minister at the court of Russia,” to undertake the journey. He departed from Petersburg on the 6th of December, 1737, and arrived at Constantinople on the 29th of the next month. With respect to his commission, he merely observes that he punctually conformed to the terms of his instructions. His negotiations did not detain him long. He left Constantinople on the 8th of April, and on the 17th of May arrived at Petersburg. Here he concludes his account of himself and his travels. In the decline of his life he returned to Scotland, where he resided at Antermony, his native place; and it was there that, surrounded apparently by affluence, and enjoying the most ample leisure, he wrote his excellent and interesting account of his travels, the first edition of which appeared in 1762. His death took place in 1780.