Meanwhile one important result has come from the recent war. Li Hung Chang and the other progressive statesmen of the empire, who have long been convinced that the only hope of China lies in its being thrown open to Western science and art, have now become able to carry out their plans, the conservative opposition having seriously broken down. The result of this is seen in a dozen directions. Railroads, long almost completely forbidden, have now gained free "right of way," and before many years promise to traverse the country far and wide. Steamers plough their way for a thousand miles up the Yang-tse-Kiang; engineers are busy exploiting the coal and iron mines of the Flowery Kingdom; great factories, equipped with the best modern machinery, are springing up in the foreign settlements; foreign books are being translated and read; and the emperor and the dowager empress have even gone so far as to receive foreign ambassadors in public audience and on a footing of outward equality in the "forbidden city" of Peking, long the sacredly secluded centre of an empire locked against the outer world. [=What the Future May Bring to China=] All this is full of significance. The defeat of China in 1895 may prove its victory, if it starts it upon a career of acceptance of Western civilization which shall, before the twentieth century has far advanced, raise it to the level of Japan. It must be borne in mind that the extraordinary progress of the island empire has been made within about forty years. China is a larger body and in consequence less easy to move, but its people are innately practical and the pressure of circumstances is forcing them forward. Within the next half century this great empire, despite its thousands of years of unchanging conditions, may take a wonderful bound in advance, and come up to Japan in the race of political and industrial development. In such a case all talk of the partition of China must cease, and it will take its place among the greatest powers of the world. CHAPTER XXI. The Era of Colonies. Since civilization began nations have endeavored to extend their dominions, not alone by adding to their territory by the conquest of adjoining countries, but also by sending out their excess population to distant regions and founding colonies that served as aids to and feeders of the parent state. In the ancient world the active commercial nations, Phoenicia and Greece, were alert in this direction, some of their colonies,--Carthage, for instance,--becoming powerful enough to gain the status of independent states. In modern times the colonial era began with the discovery of America in 1492 and the circumnavigation of Africa immediately afterwards. Spain and Portugal, the leaders in enterprise at that period, were quick to take advantage of their discoveries, while France, Great Britain and Holland came into the field as founders of colonies at a later date.