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 Mongol tribes generally are a stout, squat, swarthy, ill-favored
race of men, having high and broad shoulders, short, broad noses,
pointed and prominent chins, long teeth distant from each other, eyes
black, elliptical, and unsteady, thick, short necks, extremities bony
and nervous, muscular thighs, but short legs, with a stature nearly or
quite equal to the European. They have a written language, but their
literature is limited and mostly religious. The same language is spoken
by all the tribes, with slight variations and only a small admixture of
foreign words. Most of the accounts of their origin, their wars, and
their habits, were written by foreigners living or travelling among
them; but they themselves, as McCulloch remarks, know as little of
these things as rats or marmots do of their descent. Yet it is not so
easy to find the typical Mongol among the medley of nationalities in
their towns. A crowd in a town like Yarkand exhibits all the varieties
of the human race. The gaunt, almost beardless Manchu, with sunken
eyes, high cheek-bones, and projecting jowl, contrasts with the smooth
face, pinky yellow, oblique eye, flat cheeks, and rounded jowl of
the Chinese. The bearded, sallow Toork, the angular, rosy Kirghís,
the coarse, hard Dungani, and thick-lipped, square-faced Eleuth, all
show poorly with the tall, handsome Cashmerian, the swarthy Badakshi,
and robust, intelligent Uzbek. The fate of the vast swarms of this
race which have descended from the table-land of Central Asia and
overrun, in different ages, the plains of India, China, Syria, Egypt,
and Eastern Europe, and the rise and fall of the gigantic empire they
themselves erected under Genghis in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
are among the most remarkable episodes in the world’s history. They
have always maintained the same character in their native wilds, their
conquests have been exterminations rather than subjugations, their
history a record of continual quarrels between clans.
The last of the five races is the Tibetan, who partake of the physical
characteristics of the Mongols and Hindus. They are short, squat, and
broad-shouldered in body, with angular faces, wide, high cheek-bones,
small black eyes, and scant beard. They are mild in disposition, have a
stronger religious feeling than the Chinese, and have never left their
own highlands either for emigration or conquest. Their civilization is
fully equal to that of the Siamese and Burmese, and life and property
are more secure with them than among their turbulent neighbors in
Butan, Lahore, or Cabul.
~CIVILIZATION PAST AND FUTURE.~
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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