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 _Climate_ of the Eighteen Provinces has been represented in
meteorological tables sufficiently well to ascertain its general
salubrity. Pestilences do not frequently visit the land, nor, as in
Southern India, is it deluged with rain during one monsoon, and parched
with drought during the other. The average temperature of the whole
empire is lower than that of any other country on the same latitude,
and the coast is subject to the same extremes as that of the Atlantic
States in America. The isothermal line of 70° F. as the average for
the year, which passes south of Canton, runs by Cairo and New Orleans,
eight degrees north of it; the line of 60° F. average passes from
Shanghai to Marseilles, Raleigh, St. Louis, and north of San Francisco;
and the line of 50° F. average goes near Peking, thence on to Vienna,
Dublin, Philadelphia, and Puget’s Sound, in lat. 52°. These various
lines show that while Shanghai and Peking have temperatures similar
to Raleigh and Philadelphia, nearly on their own parallels, Canton is
the coldest place on the globe in its latitude, and the only place
within the tropics where snow falls near the sea-shore. One result of
this projection of the temperate zone into the tropical is seen in the
greater vigor and size of the people of the three southern provinces
over any races on the same parallel elsewhere; and the productions are
not so strictly tropical. The isothermal lines for the year, as given
above, are not so irregular as those for winter. The line of 60° F.
runs by the south of Formosa and Hongkong, to Cairo and St. Augustine,
a range of nine degrees; but the winter line of 40° F. passes from
Shanghai to Constantinople, Milan, Dublin, and Raleigh, ending at
Puget’s Sound, a range of twenty degrees. A third line of 32° for
winter passes through Shantung to N. Tibet and the Black Sea, Norway,
New York, and Sitka--a range of twenty-five degrees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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