They invented and used the things that we regard as almost the highest products of our civilization. They had used the mariner's compass for centuries before we had it; they invented printing perhaps a thousand years before Gutenberg; they invented gunpowder, which they had used in war and every-day life; they had the best paper ever seen long before the rest of the world had any, and the outside nations have not yet been able to duplicate theirs; they invented the newspaper, and have the oldest journal in the world, the Pekin Gazette; they discovered the Golden Rule, unless that honor belongs to the Greek, Thales; they developed philosophy—the highest system of the world, in Confucianism—before the Greeks, and, of course, long before the Germans; and they were the first people of the world to appreciate education.
Moreover, as Mr. Wu, the great Chinese minister at Washington, has so often pointed out, they were democratic long before Thomas Jefferson, and long before the Greeks had invented the word "democracy," or had discovered the idea of a democratic state or city. I had been taught that the hard-headed and practical Scotch had invented the macadam road, naming it from a canny Scot of that name; but I found a macadamized road in China three or four thousand years old, and long enough to wrap around the British Isles. The Chinese have long preceded us, and they may long survive us, nullifying all the "imperialism" and "expansionism" of Europe and America, which would cut her into fragments as the spoil of the world.
While I was in China, on this first visit, and on the several occasions of my later visits, I gave much thought to the vast population of that country. I have come to the conclusion that the population is less than half, probably less than one-third, of what it is generally estimated to be. I notice that the Chinese viceroys have recently made an estimate of their respective provinces, at the command of the emperor, and that the total reaches the enormous figure of 425,000,000. I do not believe that there are 200,000,000 people in the entire empire, and I should prefer estimating the population at something between 150,000,000 and 175,000,000.
I found that China is not a densely populated country, as is generally supposed. The seashore is fairly crowded, and the impression one gets from seeing the surface of the water covered at Canton with rafts and floats on which more than 100,000 persons live, is that the inhabitants must swarm in the same degree over the face of the land. This is not the case. Even the coast is merely fringed with people. Back in the interior there are no such dense masses of population. All accounts that I can read of the interior, from Father Huc down to Mr. Parsons of New York, bear me out in this. I can not see where there are more than 175,000,000, or 150,000,000, people in that empire. The reports of the slaughter in the Tai-ping rebellion, of some 20,000,000 people, would seem to indicate a population of at least 200,000,000 or 250,000,000; but these figures were greatly exaggerated, as all such things are in China. All statistics are nothing but guesswork, and the bigger they are the better people like them.
I engaged passage in the Greta, which was to go to Shimoda and Hakodate, Japan. My objective point was Yokohama, where it was my purpose to establish a branch of the house of Train & Co., Melbourne. My Australian house was not connected with Colonel Train's Boston and Liverpool packet firm. At this time, however, the English and Russians, who were not as good friends then as they are now, were fighting, and the little war completely upset all of my plans. I could not get to Yokohama at all, and did not visit Japan until several years later. I had, therefore, to give up my passage in the Greta, and turn my face from Japan. Just at this point, Augustine Heard invited G. Griswold Gray, of Russell & Co., and me to go to Fu-chow, on one of his sailing ships, the John Wade.
George Francis Train dictating his autobiography in his room in the Mills Hotel.
This trip I very willingly made, as I wanted to see everything of China that was possible; but it was more adventurous than I had expected. As we were sailing down the China coast, a typhoon struck us, and over went sails and masts. Our pilot from Shanghai was immediately in difficulties, as the pilot from Fu-chow, whom we had just picked up, did not understand the pilot we had brought from Shanghai. I had the utmost difficulty, owing to my inadequate mastery of pidgin-English, in establishing communication between these essential elements of our little crew. We had, finally, to get into a boat and make our way up the River Min for forty miles in the dark. It was a very trying experience, as the river was absolutely unknown to me; the darkness was "unpierceable by power of any star," and the river was treacherous in itself for small boats. To make matters worse, it was infested by junk pirates. This latter danger I had got somewhat accustomed to, as almost every inch of Chinese water was, in those days, the field of operations for these pirates. The other nations of the world had not yet adopted effective means for getting rid of them as the United States got rid of the Algerian and Tripolitan plunderers.
We arrived at Fu-chow, after a harassing night on the river. Almost the first thing to greet my curious eyes, as they were sweeping the horizon for wonders in that land of wonders, was the old suspension bridge, which the Chinese assert was built in the fourteenth century. It proved to be as much of a curiosity as the Chinese wall in the north. At Fu-chow I was a guest in the house of the Russells. Immediately upon landing, Gray, Heard, and myself took sedan chairs for a tour through the city.