“The foundation consists of large blocks of square stones laid in mortar; but the rest of the wall is built of brick. The whole is so strong and well built as to need almost no repair, and in such a dry climate may remain in this condition for many ages. Its height and breadth are not equal in every place; nor, indeed, is it necessary they should. When carried over steep rocks, where no horse can pass, it is about fifteen or twenty feet high, and broad in proportion; but when running through a valley, or crossing a river, there you see a strong wall, about thirty feet high, with square towers at the distance of a bowshot from one another, and embrasures at equal distances. The top of the wall is flat, and paved with broad freestones; and where it rises over a rock, or any eminence, you ascend by a fine easy stone stair. The bridges over rivers and torrents are exceedingly neat, being both well contrived and executed. They have two stories of arches, one above another, to afford sufficient passage for the waters on sudden rains and floods.”[[6]]
[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 contemptible obstacle 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 reste point 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 calculate an 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 at length, 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 life of 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.