On October 13 the rebels proclaimed a republic in the province of Hu-peh, with Li Yuan-hung as president, and notified the foreign consuls that the property and persons of foreigners would be respected.
On February 12, 1912, the throne issued three edicts, in which it announced its will to abide by the decision of the National Convention and accept the republic, entrusting Yuan with the task of bringing about the new constitution in conjunction with the Nan-king government, and, after exhorting all to peacefully accept the new order, announced the abdication of the dynasty.
A constitution of seventy clauses was promulgated; the emperor was to retain his title and receive a pension, and be accorded the civility due to a foreign sovereign. On February 27 the Nan-king Assembly endorsed this decision by electing Yuan president, and he was formally installed on March 10.
Yuan’s administration was hampered by the movements in Mongolia and Tibet towards autonomy, movements countenanced by Russia and Great Britain respectively. Difficulties were also put in the way of China by the European powers in the matter of a development loan, but President Yuan, supported by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, seems to have laid securely the foundations of the largest republic the world has yet seen.
President Yuan Shi-ki was assassinated in 1916, and succeeded by Li Yuan-hung.
INDIA
INDIA, the Indian Empire of the British crown, is an extensive region of southern Asia, and next after China the most populous area in the world. It occupies the central peninsula of southern Asia, and has a length of some nineteen hundred miles, a breadth of sixteen hundred, and an area, inclusive of Burma, of 1,766,650 square miles. The natural boundaries of this vast region are, on the north, the range of the Himalaya Mountains, which separates it from Tartary, China, and Tibet; on the west, the mountainous frontiers of Afghanistan and, farther south, of Persia; on the southwest and south the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean; on the east the hill ranges which border upon Burma and the Bay of Bengal.
Surface.—The region presents a diversified surface and scenery. It has indeed been called “an epitome of the whole earth,” consisting as it does of mountains far above the level of perpetual snow, broad and fertile plains bathed in intense sunshine, arid wastes, and impenetrable forests.
The most prominent feature in the relief of India is the great range of snowy peaks named the Himalaya, or “abode of snow,” which rises on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, above the northern plains, stretching out in a continuous chain for nearly eighteen hundred miles. The mean height of this portion of the borders of the Tibetan plateau, defined very clearly by the channels of the Indus and the Bramaputra, is estimated at thirteen thousand feet; the mean breadth of its base is about one hundred and fifty miles. Its summits rise to twenty-nine thousand feet, and most of the difficult passes ascending from the valleys and gorges of the Indian side are not lower than about sixteen thousand feet.