Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to Canton — John Shaqi
Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to CantonBarrow, John, Sir
History
Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to Canton
Barrow, John, Sir
China -- Description and travel
And whether the Phœnicians did or did not, in the earliest periods of
history, double the Cape of Good of Hope there is abundant reason for
supposing they were well acquainted with the east coast of Africa as far
as the _Cape of Currents_. Nor is it probable that the extent and
flourishing condition of the trade and commerce of _Tyrus_ should have
been limited to that part of the Indian ocean to the southward of the
Red Sea, which is a more difficult navigation than to the northward.
That this commerce was extensive we have the authority of the prophet
Ezekiel, who, in glowing terms, has painted its final destruction, and
who, it may be remarked, is supposed to have lived at the very time the
Phœnicians sailed round Africa by order of Necho. "Thy riches and thy
fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners and thy pilots, thy caulkers, and
the occupiers of thy merchandize, and all thy men of war that are in
thee, and in all thy company which is in the midst of thee, shall fall
into the midst of the seas in the day of thy ruin." It is probable
therefore that the navigation of the Eastern Seas was known in the
earliest periods of history, and there seems to be no reason for
supposing that the Chinese should not have had their share in it.
Without, however, making any enquiry into the probability that an
ancient intercourse might have subsisted between China and the East
coast of Africa, either by convention for commercial purposes, or that
Chinese sailors might have been thrown on that coast either in
Phœnician, or Arabian, or their own vessels, I happened to observe in
a former publication of "_Travels in Southern Africa_," as a matter of
fact, "that the upper lid of the eye of a real Hottentot, as in that of
a Chinese, was rounded into the lower on the side next the nose, and
that it formed not an angle as in the eye of an European--that from this
circumstance they were known in the colony of the Cape by the name of
_Chinese Hottentots_." Further observations have confirmed me in the
very striking degree of resemblance between them. Their physical
characters agree in almost every point. The form of their persons in
the remarkable smallness of the joints and the extremities, their voices
and manner of speaking, their temper, their colour and features, and
particularly that singular shaped eye rounded in the corner next the
nose like the end of an ellipsis, probably of Tartar or Scythian origin,
are nearly alike. They also agree in the broad root of the nose; or
great distance between the eyes: and in the oblique position of these,
which, instead of being horizontal, as is generally the case in European
subjects, are depressed towards the nose. A Hottentot who attended me in
travelling over Southern Africa was so very like a Chinese servant I had
in Canton, both in person, features, manners, and tone of voice, that
almost always inadvertently I called him by the name of the latter.
Their hair, it is true, and that only differs. This, in a Hottentot, is
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