Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1886-07-30

| W. iAN 'Nii' itS h1cto ONCINllclIll-
ing the adjoining lands, and its bed is
| thirty feet above the level of the sur.
| rounding conntry-this elevation hav.
ing been caused by the gradual depo.
sltlon OF earthly material from the
heavily-laden waters. Assuming, al.
though in the nature of things it can
only be an assumption, that this de.
post is in the same ratio as that laid
upon the valley of Egypt by the mum
dations Of the Nile-four inches in a
century-it is easy TO infer how long a
period may have elapsed since the ar
tificial banks were first raised by a
sedentary people to protect their fields
from injurious overflow. 1t is, how
ever, sufficient to accept the usually
acknowledged date of the beginning of
letters as the period in which the char
acter of the race began to harden into
permanent form, and the institutions
which illustrate if they have not
caused its permanence, began to have
the force of organic laws. This was
but two hundred years later than the
historic inception of Babylonian power
as unfOlded from the study of the cune-
form inscriptions. At that day the
Shepherd Kings had not yet entered
Egypt. 1t was nine hundred years
before the appearance of the Hellenes
in Thessaly; it was more than eleven
centuries earlier than the siege of Trov.
Since then, Babylon and Assyria and
the later Egypt, the great empire of
the Medes and Persians, the nations of
Macedon and Rome and Byzantium
have risen, and ruled, and passed
away. Race has followed race and
new languages have chased away the
old i'll every land but one, that between
the Himalayas and the Yellow Sea.
In that country there has been no
change save by the normal develop
ment of native faculties and the prog
ress of original tendencies acted upon
by the unchanging agencies of soil
and climate, and fixed by the utter alb
sence of fusion or admixture with
races of different mould.
If there had existed, from the begin
ming of time, no other people on the
face of the earth, the character of the
Chinese would scarcely have been diff
ferent from what is. They separated
from the world in an infancy whose
speech was in monosyllables, and
which, rs We shall see, had not yet
learned the use of some of the crudest
of the implements of human toll.
They spread in scattered settlements
that gradually broadened and touched
and coalesced. They repelled the Tar
tar to the north; they drove the abor-
igines southwark and westward from
the irrigable lands. Slow, laborious
and patient, obedient with superstitious
obedience to the elders whose age
gave them experience and made them
conservative, they invented for each
difficulty only remedy that met its
sharpest detriment and rested content
without thought or care or more. In
arts, in letters, in customs, every adj
vance from the very oustset was self
involved, sprang from some cause in
grained and inherent in the race itself
and its conditions of existence; and
each, in its time and place, instead of
revolutionizing, intensified and perpet-
uated the character that gave it birth.
1t is not without utility that We may
trace the development of this peculiar
race and note the fixedness of the
mental, moral and physical type, the
fixedness of social and political in
stitutions due to a strong but course
racial individuality at the outset, and
an environment that, supplying all
physical needs, left that individuality
to work out its tendencies without
hindrance or modification.
Nothing affords more facile proofs of
the common origin of races, now re-
mote from each other, than does the
identity of terms applied to the neces-
saries of life, and the similarity of the
rude implements by which the simple
operations of industry are performed.
The former has shown the primal
unity Of Sanscrit and Zend, and traced
to its farthest source the origin of the
Arpan peoples; the latter shows that
the arts of craftsmen had reached a
certain excellence before the European
parted company with the natives OF
India. But by neither of these clues
can any connection be traced between
China and other lands. The language
even in its simplest roots, has no ana.
logue; and the implements of industry
have characteristic forms that demon.
strate their origin to be distinct. The
anvil of the Chinese smith is not flat
like the anvils of other countries, but
convex on its face or working surface
and the bellows of a Chinese forge, in
stead of moving vertically, has hori-
zontal stroke. The paper of the Chi.
nese is thin and weak, is printed on
one side only, but doubled to present
folded edge at the rim of the leaf
and a printed surface on each side
The chain-pump of China has square
barrel, that of other lands is cylindric.
Brass is made elsewhere by melting
together copper and zinc in a crucible