They invented and used the things that we regard as almost the highest products of our civilization. They had used the mariner's compass for centuries before we had it; they invented printing perhaps a thousand years before Gutenberg; they invented gunpowder, which they had used in war and every-day life; they had the best paper ever seen long before the rest of the world had any, and the outside nations have not yet been able to duplicate theirs; they invented the newspaper, and have the oldest journal in the world, the Pekin Gazette; they discovered the Golden Rule, unless that honor belongs to the Greek, Thales; they developed philosophy--the highest system of the world, in Confucianism--before the Greeks, and, of course, long before the Germans; and they were the first people of the world to appreciate education. Moreover, as Mr. Wu, the great Chinese minister at Washington, has so often pointed out, they were democratic long before Thomas Jefferson, and long before the Greeks had invented the word "democracy," or had discovered the idea of a democratic state or city. I had been taught that the hard-headed and practical Scotch had invented the macadam road, naming it from a canny Scot of that name; but I found a macadamized road in China three or four thousand years old, and long enough to wrap around the British Isles. The Chinese have long preceded us, and they may long survive us, nullifying all the "imperialism" and "expansionism" of Europe and America, which would cut her into fragments as the spoil of the world. While I was in China, on this first visit, and on the several occasions of my later visits, I gave much thought to the vast population of that country. I have come to the conclusion that the population is less than half, probably less than one-third, of what it is generally estimated to be. I notice that the Chinese viceroys have recently made an estimate of their respective provinces, at the command of the emperor, and that the total reaches the enormous figure of 425,000,000. I do not believe that there are 200,000,000 people in the entire empire, and I should prefer estimating the population at something between 150,000,000 and 175,000,000.