It has only been for the last forty years that either China or Japan can be said to have been open to Europeans. The history of the latter nation is a proof of what an active, brave, and intelligent people may achieve in the course of a few years; whilst that of the former illustrates all that may remain undone where the natives of a country are convinced that they have for forty centuries had an ideal government, the best possible religion, and that the products of their industries are quite incapable of improvement. In passing judgment on the Chinese it must, however, be borne in mind that their country is, by its natural boundaries, so completely isolated from the rest of the world as to justify to some extent their intense reluctance to open relations with the Red Devils of the West, as they call all Europeans, whether fair or dark, though it was evidently the bright auburn hair and rosy complexions of so many of the English visitors to China which originated the name. The giving of this title is the only vengeance the poor yellow skins have been able to take on those who invaded their capital, pillaged their palaces and burnt their arsenals and vessels, not to speak of the importation of the pernicious drug, opium, which is responsible for the death of thousands every year. [Sidenote: THE BOUNDARIES OF CHINA] Independently of the Great Wall which once, though not very successfully, defended China from the incursions of the Mongols and Manchus, the Celestial Empire is bounded on the north by the great Gobi desert and the grass steppes of Southern Mongolia; on the east by the sea of China, the Eastern and the Yellow Seas; whilst on the west rise many a lofty chain of mountains, their summits almost always crowned with snow. These latter have not yet been all fully explored, though the name of many a hero of discovery is connected with them, including that of Prince Henry of Orleans, Margary and Marcel Monnier of quite recent fame. In the vast circle enclosed within these boundaries of desert, mountain, and sea, nearly every kind of vegetation can be successfully cultivated in one district or another, whilst a considerable variety of types of the great human family is met with, including members belonging to the same groups as the people who have poured into Corea, Japan, Formosa, the Philippine Islands, Indo-China, Siam, Kulja, and even a country so far away as Persia.