The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-26 00:00:00

WOODEN RAILWAYS.

At the last session of the Quelec Legislature, Acts were
obtained for the constructhn of wooden railways, and
active measures are now being tt.ken to carry some of the
schemes into effect. It is expected that where timber
is plentiful, wooden rails are likely to take the
place of iron ones. A Mr. Foster has lately
introduced a new kind of wooden rail. Instead
of the rail being made of a continuous piece,
small blocks of hard wood are pinned in between two
pieces of any soft timber, so as to make a continuous rail,
along which the wheel travels, but crossing the grain of
the wood. In this way all warping is avoided, and the
weight of the engine does not crush the fibre of the wood,
sa is the case when the wheel goes with the 'grain. The
success of these railways is very important, for they are
very inexpensive.

DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY CHINESE.

(From the Anglo-American Times.)

We bare not observed anything of interest having
a special reference to America in the magazines for
August, or in the last quarterlies. There is a very
good article in the Fortnightly on " Emigration,"
which takes up the ground maintained by John Wal-
ter, Esq., M. P., that emigrants should be educated
and trained for the new country, and to make Eng-
lish emigration really tell to the benefit of the
Fatherland in the United States, those sent should
be good citizens, and equal in intelligence and edu-
cation to the poor classes of native Americans.
The Gentleman's Magazine reproduces a subject,
handled upwards of a year ago in the article of the
Edinburgh Review, entitled " American Archaeo-
logy." The question is, who first discovered Ame-
rica ? Mr. Wells, the writer, inclines to the
belief that the Chinese had landed on the con-
tinent one thousand years before the Spaniards,
when they found existing in the country a reli-
gion similar to that of the Buddhists, and man-
ners and customs with which they were familiar.
According to J. Hanley, the Chinese interpreter in
San Francisco, the following statements are ex-
tracted from Chinese historians and geographers :
Fourteen hundred years ago, even America had been
discovered and described by them. They stated
that land to be about 20,000 of their miles distant
from China. About 500 years after the birth of
Christ Buddhist priests repaired there, and brought
back the news that they had met with Buddhist
idols and religious writings in the country already.
Their descriptions in many respects resemble those
of the Spaniards a thousand years after. They
pgctbiataac.elpitli:led evibarrosototheu,he country " Fusany," after a tree which
correspond
whosere w
o a7l
bi
doaswrekh
exactlyolt loaves
aut
iiresemblen
teact;hckloaosTbteil
liyiecosfura, the
bamboo, whose bark the natives made clothes and
paper out of, and whose fruit they ate. The par-
tln given by the American historian, Prescott,
about the Magnay tree in Mexico. He states that
the " Aztecs prepared a pulp for paper-making
out of the bark of this tree. Then even its
leaves were used for thatching; its fibres for
making rope ; its roots yielded a very nourish-
ing food; and its sap, by means of fertnentation,
was made into au intoxicating drink. The accounts
given by the Chinese and Spaniards, although a
thousand years apart, agree iii stating that the na-
tives did not possess any iron, but only copper ; that
they made all their tools for working in stone and
metal out of a mixture of copper and tin ; and they,
in comparison with the natives of Europe and Asia,
thought but little of the worth of silver and gold.
The religious customs and forms of worship pre-