[393] The ‘Celestial Empire,’ according to her annals, began b.c. 100,000–80,000; the date being probably astronomical, or rather astrological, founded, like the four Hindu æras, upon retrograde calculations. The first cycle of 60 years is attributed to the Emperor Hwang-tí, and its initiation to the 61st year of his reign, in b.c. 2637 (the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt?). The first historical dates are given in b.c. 651, a century after the foundation of Rome: these figures afford a curious contrast between pretensions and proof. But as Englishmen after long residence ‘grow black’ in Africa, and have become semi-Hinduised in India, so in China they have allowed themselves to be imposed upon by the ‘magna fabulositas,’ the marvellous self-sufficiency of astute semi-barbarians. ‘China is a sea that salts all the rivers which flow into it.’ Yet I am curious to ascertain by actual travel if China ever possessed a centre of civilisation independent of what she received from the West; in other words, non-Egyptian.
[394] Of the 214 keys or radicals. The first three arithmetical figures are lines disposed horizontally, while the Egyptians wrote them vertically. In his Terminal Table (affixed to this chapter) Mr. Day assigns Chinese to the ‘Sporadic or Allophyllian family.’ I believe it to be the oldest and, as far as we know, the original form of Turanian speech, a kind of tertium quid deduced from the so-called ‘Aryan’ and ‘Semitic’ elements of Egyptian.
[395] Trans. Bib. Archæol. 1879. Sayce’s Grammar gives 522 Assyrian characters.
[396] The lump of iron worked into a mass more or less rectangular is called a bloom, from the Saxon bloma, metal in mass (Bosworth): Bloma ferri occurs in the Domesday Book. Hence ancient furnaces were called bloomeries; the Elizabethan spelling is a bloomary. The blooms were beaten out to bars.
[397] In Persia I was told that this was one of the ‘secrets’ of making the finest Khorasáni blades.
[398] It followed the Mongols and preceded the Manchow Tartars, who still reign.
[399] This process of converting iron to steel is first described in ‘Alchemiæ Gebri (El-Gabr), Arabis philosophi solertissimi, Libri, &c., Joan. Petreius Nurembergen̄. denuo Bernæ excudi faciebat. anno 1545.’ The Arab, known to Albertus Magnus, flourished in the eighth to the ninth century. According to Beckmann, he noticed the ore cineritii (cupellation) et cementi (cementation) tolerans. The mixture is usually of sal ammoniac, borax, alum, and fine salt: the many varieties are described by Percy, Ure, and a host of others. Compare also Ure’s account of cast-steel and of shear-steel, the latter so called because cloth-shears were forged of it.
[400] At least it would so appear from the following passage (p. 176): ‘When we examine the etymology of ‘pole,’ or ‘pillar,’ thus—Saxon, pol or pal; German, Pfahl; Danish, paal or pol; Swedish, pale; Welsh pawl—we arrive at the Latin palus, which, besides signifying a pole or stake, is also the φαλλός of the Greeks, Mahadeva (?) or Linga (?) of the Hindoos, Bel or Baal (?) of the Chaldeans, Yakhveh (?) of the Canaanites, Ti-mohr of the ancient Irish, and Teih-mo of the Chinese,’ &c.
[401] Notes from Mr. Henderson’s Diary during a Ramble through Shansi, in March 1874, published by Mr. Day (Appendix D, p. 251). Colonel Yule (Marco Polo, ii. 429), alluding to these enormous deposits of coal and metal, says: ‘Baron Richtofen, in the paper which we quote from, indicates the revolution in the deposit of the world’s wealth and power, to which such facts, combined with other characteristics of China, point as probable; a revolution so vast that its contemplation seems like that of a planetary catastrophe.’
[402] Les Mondes, tome xxvi., Dec. 1871.