The Middle Kingdom, Volume 1 (of 2): A Survey of the Geography, Government, Literature, Social Life, Arts, and History of the Chinese Empire and its InhabitantsWilliams, S. Wells (Samuel Wells)
History
The Middle Kingdom, Volume 1 (of 2): A Survey of the Geography, Government, Literature, Social Life, Arts, and History of the Chinese Empire and its Inhabitants
Williams, S. Wells (Samuel Wells)
China
the proportions of limbs and body of the sitting figure are, on the
whole, good, the Buddha being represented with right hand upraised in
blessing, and the figure as well as garments richly covered with color
and gilt. Before the god stand two smaller colossi of the _Schang-hoa_,
Buddha’s favorite disciples; their inferior art and workmanship,
however, testify to a later origin. The cave is lighted from above,
after the manner of the Pantheon, by a single round opening in the
vaulting. Sixty feet over the rock temple rises a tile roofing, and
upon the hillside without the cavern are a number of minor temples and
statues.[74]
Next to this city in importance is Hanchung, near the border of
Sz’chuen; it was much injured by the Tai-pings, and is only slowly
recovering, like all the towns in that valley which were exposed;
none of these rebels crossed the Tsingling Mountains. Yu-lin (‘Elm
Forest’) is an important city on the Great Wall in the north of Shensí,
the station of a garrison which overawes the Mongols. Several marts
carrying on considerable trade are on or near the Wei and Han Rivers.
Gold mines occur in Shensí, and gold is collected in some of the
streams; other metals also are worked. The climate is too cold for
rice and silk; wheat, millet, oats, maize, and cotton supply their
places; rhubarb, musk, wax, red-lead, coal, and nephrite are exported.
The trade of Sí-ngan is chiefly that of bartering the produce of the
eastern provinces (reaching it by the great pass of Tung-kwan) and that
from Tibet, Kansuh, and Ílí. Wild animals still inhabit the northern
parts, and the number of horses, sheep, goats, and cattle raised for
food and service is large compared with eastern China.
~KANSUH PROVINCE.~
The immense province of KANSUH (_i.e._, Voluntary Reverence, made by
uniting the names of Kanchau fu and Suh chau) belonged at one time to
Shensí, and extended no farther west than Kiayü kwan; but since the
division by Kienlung, its limits have been stretched across the desert
to the confines of Songaria on the northwest, and to the borders of
Tibet on the west. It is bounded north and northeast by Gobi and the
Dsassaktu khanate, east by Shensí, south by Sz’chuen, southwest by
Koko-nor and the desert, and northwest by Cobdo and Ílí. Its entire
area cannot be much under 400,000 square miles, the greater part of
which is a barren waste; it extends across twelve degrees of latitude
and twenty-one degrees of longitude, and comprises all the best part of
the ancient kingdom of Tangut, which was destroyed by Genghis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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