The Press., 1895-12-05
[Arthur H. Smith in New York Observer.I CHINA AND INDIA CONTRASTED.

Perhaps the first resemblance between India and China which strikes one is the absolutely dense population, such as is to be seen in no other lands. The millions of China teem, and so too, do those of India. It would require long travel and wide base line to get any valuable i'm pression as to which population seems to be the denser, and even then all would depend upon the area selected, since Chi na has for such purposes practically no census. Another marked resemblance between China and India is to be found in the oriental traits of the people-the courtesy, the industry, the patience and the insincerity which come to the surface upon occasion. Indian servants, like those in China, are the best in the world honest, faithful, assiduous, only it seems strange to always having them come, not as single spies, but in battalions. Yet while we speak of industry, we feel at once that there is not to be seen in India that tireless assiduity that characterizes the Chinese farmer. Vast areas appear to be unoccupied in India, every inch of which in China would be verdant with harvests. Grain and cotton fields in h. dia are often covered with weeds which in China would be exterminated before they had become more than visible.
 The contrast which forces itself upon ones observation in considering the Indi- oI &Lo homogeneity of the population of China, especially of the eighteen provinces, and the heterogeneity of that of India. One may live in Pekin for long time and never discriminate Chinese from Man chu, and there are few who can with cer- tainty identify Chinese Mohammedan, albeit there are supposed to be some 20 millions of them. But every great Indian city Is perfect panorama of races and costumes. A list has been made by an enterprising missionary of 76 languages which are actually used in Bombay. Signs on some ot the shops give the names | in English of twelve languages which are ''spoken here" It may be doubted wheth- CT there is elsewhere to be found any thing to parallel this curry of races, Ian- guages and religions. One who is accus- | toned to the intoierant fanatieism Of the 1 typical Mohammedan marvels to see hundreds of thousands of them dwelling side by side with the hated and despised idolatrous Hindus It is not that time and habit have blunted the edge of race hatred, for this is not the case. The wild festival in which the Moslems bewail the death of two of their martyrs, festival known as the Muharran, occasionally CO., incides by the vagaries of the lunar year with 8 Hindu feast, and on these occa- sions terrible riots have often occurred, | especially at Benares, where Hindu and Mohammedan temples occupy the same sites. On one of these occasions the num- of those killed amounted to many hund- | reds-perhaps to thousands. That these collisions are by no means ancient histo- | ry, is illustrated by the fact that two years ago one of them took place in the city of Bombay, requiring all the force of the municipal authorities for it's suppress ion. Despite all precautions similar out breaks on a small scale took place in oth- CT places during the current year. The Mohammedans go out of their way to slaughter the sacred COW, and to sprinkle blood on the most contaminating spots, needless of their great inferiority in num- bers, and of the possibility that the Hindu may retort by the massacre and dispersion of the parts of the detested swine.
 Another peculiarity of India is the vast number and wide diffusion of its aborigi- nal races, the wild forest tribes, of which are estimated in the last census as Il millions for British India, and over IA millions for all India. But besides these there is an exceedingly great mixed null titude5 5tbat is neither Aryan nor Moham- l medan, but consists of ''half-Hinduized abprlgtnals;" of whom quarter of cen tury ago, 'there were 17t millions. Noth- ing at all resembling this phenomenon is to be seen in China. Those parts of the empire where the Chinese race was mixed ] with other elements are now quite con- formed to the Chinese type, and practi- cally indistinguishab'e from the rest, l while the wild tribes of the southwest are ofrno, practical importance.
 Revenging an injury does more harm