physical development. The hard training of a mountain people is a very wholesome one for success in the lowlands. They make, too, the best colonisers.

In the Tropical parts of the world, the relation between the dwellers on the plateaus and the lowlanders is different from that prevailing in Temperate regions, such as we have been considering. The inhabitants of mountainous regions in the Tropics, breathing a purer air, and leading a healthier life, are nearly everywhere superior. The enervating climate of the lowlands saps the strength of the people whose lot is cast therein. I am not one of those who assert, in face of the indisputable facts to the contrary, that we Europeans can colonise Tropical lands; but, of course, if we are compelled to go to them, then life on a high plateau is preferable to life in the lowlands, because the climate. there approximates more closely to our own. In Tropical America native civilisation had its birth in the highlands, and not in the plains— in Mexico and Peru, and not in the low-lying regions of the Amazons. In Africa, too, we are told, by travellers who observe carefully, that the inhabitants of the Interior are superior in every way to those of the Coastal regions. The latter have, of course, been corrupted by Europeans; but, in the first instance, their life in the unhealthy coastal zone must have had an enervating effect upon them. The only native empires that Tropical Africa has ever known have been those which sprang up in the healthier highland regions. For Africa, they were really powerful. We know, too, from Portuguese narratives, that it was the inland tribes which pressed to the coasts, overcoming those settled thereon; nor has this migratory movement altogether ceased at the present day. Thus, the process of regeneration, by the strong supplanting the enervated, is observable in Africa, as elsewhere.

We now pass to a consideration of mountains as political boundaries. They are admittedly more effective in this respect than are rivers, more especially if they happen to be only sparsely inhabited; and I am only speaking now of lofty mountain chains. The further you penetrate into such mountain regions, from either side, the fewer indications you find of human habitation. They might be deserts, as far as their influence on man is concerned, for they are deserted by him. Such mountain barriers form ideal political boundaries, as in the case of the Alps. In Europe, however, the interchange of populations is so great that an overflow is experienced. A very curious instance of this overflow is presented in the Southern Tyrol. You find there a German-speaking population, representing the residue of a great wave of German migration that overflowed towards Italy, and at one time even reached the plains of Lombardy. The Italian people consequently withdrew to their most fertile districts, leaving the less productive mountain valleys to the new-comers. And there they survive, just as the Highlanders survive in Scotland; but, unless strengthened by an accession of numbers, there they will gradually die out; and the boundaries fixed by Nature herself will prevail in the end.

What I have said in regard to mountains, in their influence on the population of a country, does not apply to mountain regions capable of supporting large communities or yielding minerals. If, for instance, in

the Pennine chain of hills, it were not for the deposits of coal found there, the manufacturing districts could not exist. Contrast Bohemia with Hungary. The former was anciently inhabited by a German tribe, who, however, left the country, and were replaced by Slavs. The new arrivals naturally occupied the most favoured regions, in the centre of the country. But, at least on three sides of Bohemia, there dwell Germans, who crossed over the mountains and occupied all that remained. These facts are not recorded in history, perhaps, but they are written on the face of the country, if we read its geographical features aright, and are recorded in census returns. A sufficient proof is afforded by the three dialects of German which are spoken in Bohemia; whilst the Slavs occupy the central region, and speak their mother-tongue. The process of assimilation is retarded by the higher degree of culture possessed by the Germans, and by the support which is afforded them by their compatriots living outside the borders of Bohemia. Now, compare this country with Hungary, which is very differently circumstanced, although the conditions there are apparently the same. We find in Hungary an alien people, the Magyars, who entered the country as conquerors. They occupied the inviting plains in the heart of the country. They, too, are now surrounded by strangers, but these, instead of speaking one and the same language, belong to at least four distinct nationalities. Thus, although the Magyars, or Hungarians proper, are in a minority, whilst the Slavs in Bohemia are in a majority, the chances of the former of eventually imposing their language upon all the inhabitants of the country are greater than the chances of the latter.

We have up to the present regarded only special features; let us now consider them collectively. Countries which possess diversity of physical features enjoy the happiest conditions, by taking advantage of which the highest triumphs of civilisation have been achieved. If, in addition to this diversity of feature, a country is provided with a good system of waterways-is not too much broken up by mountains, or too crippled by endless plains--then the conditions of life in such a country give every opportunity for the exercise of human faculties. Such conditions, however, do not exist in countries that are either highly mountainous, or include only extensive plains. In the case of Scotland, its chief advantage is this same diversity of physical embossment: a fertile plain watered by the Clyde and the Forth, with flanking hills rising into mountains, in the north and in the south. England is even more highly favoured by nature, which largely accounts for its political predominance. In England you find every geological formation in Europe. The relief of the land expresses the utmost diversity of feature, and, although on a small scale, has great beauty of contour. Everything, therefore, is in favour of the development of the British Isles as a great political centre, and of the intellectual progress of its inhabi tants, as far as physical environment can encourage such progress.

Let us glance at the United States from the same standpoint. Recall to your minds those prophecies of evil: "Oh, the United States are an impossibility; they must fall to pieces in time. The south is quite different from the north. They are marked out by Nature as

distinct regions, and ought at least to have formed two States." But why? On the face of it, such a statement is absurd. There is no country laid out on broader lines than the United States. You have the broad valley of the Mississippi between the Rockies and the Alleghanies, uniting almost the whole country. The Alleghany mountains are of moderate elevation, easily crossed, and constitute no barrier between the peoples inhabiting their opposite slopes. They may almost be likened to a rampart, having the Atlantic States for a glacis, and the broad Atlantic for a moat. If, on the Pacific side, the physical conditions are less favourable to political unity, they are not so unfavourable as to present insuperable obstacles to the enterprise of man. Whatever may be said of California as a distinct region, the United States east of the Rocky Mountains form one great community, and were intended by Nature to be one great State.

One word in conclusion. It must not be supposed, from what I have said, that Nature alone is responsible for the political phenomena I have adduced. Human activity, intelligently directed, is required in order to assist the beneficent action of Nature, or sometimes to control it. We can easily imagine a country, enjoying every physical advantage, and productive in a high degree, yet occupied by a race of men wholly unfitted to develop its resources. But, fortunately for the cause of human progress, such spendthrifts and idlers are threatened by a Nemesis which in time destroys them, unless they amend their ways. The earth has been held, and will continue to be held, only by those who are fitted to make the best of it and its resources. Nature is not everything, nor is man-her greatest triumph-a powerless agent. Man can introduce advantages which Nature has denied to a country. He can build railways where natural highways do not exist. He can construct canals where the navigation of a river is obstructed. He can bring districts that are separated by physical obstacles nearer together by creating and developing mechanical means of communication. Moreover, by his mental activity, man accomplishes the highest results. He diffuses thought by speech and in literature; and this literature unites men who are far apart into nations, and nourishes their highest aspirations after truth. Thus, man is as often the master as he is the creature of circumstances. He may, and he does, daily remove physical obstacles, but some of these are beyond his strength, and remain as landmarks on the face of the earth. Some of these landmarks I have referred to; time only prevents my dealing with others. Political geography being based on physical geography, the student of history, no less than the geographer, is bound to take account of the latter in order to appreciate or understand the former.

OUR COMMERCIAL RELATIONS WITH CHINA.

(Read at Meetings of Society, Edinburgh and Glasgow, December 1890.) BY PROFESSOR ROBERT K. DOUGLAS,

Of the British Museum, and King's College, London.

OUR commercial relations with China are of such deep importance to us as a nation that I need not offer any apology for bringing the subject before you this evening. They have extended over nearly three centuries with varying fortunes; they now represent an annual value of many millions sterling, and they possess the potentiality of almost unlimited extension in the future.

In dealing with this subject on the present occasion I propose to follow on the lines I have just indicated, and to divide my lecture, like an old-fashioned sermon, into three heads. I wish to speak first of the history of our trade with China; secondly, of our present relations with that country; and thirdly, of the prospect which lies before us in the Flowery Land.

The antiquity of the Chinese is so infinitely greater than any of which we can boast, that it need not surprise us to hear that many centuries before we existed as a nation their merchants were familiar figures in the bazaars of western Asia, and that their porcelains and silken goods were common objects in the markets of eastern and southern Europe. As early as the beginning of our era the fame of the wealth and power of China had spread throughout the Old World, and in the second century Marcus Aurelius thought it not beneath his dignity to send an embassy to the ruling emperor. Both by sea and land Chinese travellers penetrated into the west, and their early presence in Egypt was attested not many years ago by the discovery of some China porcelain bottles in mummy-containing tombs. Probably these were brought in some of the ships which we know visited the coast of Malabar and the Persian Gulf during the early centuries of the era. Attracted by the reports brought by the adventurous crews of these argosies of the might and wealth of China, Arab traders took heart of grace, and, following in the reverse track of the Chinese, found their way to Cathay, and settled themselves at Canton, and on the coasts of the Provinces of Fuhkien and Che-kiang.

It was not, however, until after the irruption of the Mongols into the west that European travellers ventured to cross Asia into China. At the head of these daring explorers went Christian missionaries, who feared neither the length of the journey nor the perils of the way so long as there was a chance of their being able to convert the barbarous subjects of the heathen khans to the peaceful doctrines of Christianity.

In the wake of these pioneers of civilisation followed lay travellers, who, from no other motive than love of gain and adventure, penetrated into every country of Asia, and in the leisurely manner common to wayfarers in those halcyon days before hurry was known, made themselves citizens of every country and denizens of every clime. The best-known

of these was Marco Polo, who made China his home for two decades, and who so won the confidence of the great Kublai Khan that for three years he held the office of Prefect of one of the busiest cities in the country. His immortal pages first gave to Europe an idea of the wealth and extent of the Chinese empire, of the richness of its marts, of the fertility of its soil, of the magnificence of its palaces and cities, and of the number and magnitude of the canals and roads which covered its surface.

It has been observed with justice that it has often been found that "profuse expenditure, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restriction, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it." Of the truth of this saying China is a signal example. In spite of an iniquitous system of administration, of corruption in high places, of the sale of justice, of dynastic changes, of revolutions, of floods, of famines, and of pestilences, the national prosperity of the empire has gradually increased and been built up, until at a period before our commerce had taken shape, Trade's proud empire held its sway throughout the land. The Chinese are essentially a nation of shopkeepers. They have a genius for trade, as is shown by the fact that almost wherever they have settled, whether in Burma, Siam, Tonquin, or the Straits Settlements, they have monopolised the higher branches of commerce, leaving to the native races the uncongenial tasks of hewing wood and drawing water. From their earliest history they have shown their capacity for amassing wealth. To a disciple who asked Confucius what should be done for the people, who had become so numerous, the sage replied, "Enrich them." Acting on this dictum, the nation's rulers have made the material well-being of the people one of their main objects, not, however, without an eye to the well-known principle, that there are no greater foes to violence and disorder than hostages given to fortune in the shape of goods and warehouses. And it must be confessed that the people have ably seconded the objects of their sovereigns. Every branch of commerce with which they are familiar has been eagerly developed, and it is not too much to say that, given the machinery which they possess, they have done as much as the wit and energy of man could possibly have accomplished to advance the trade and manufactures of the country.

Unhappily, however, the people have been grievously hampered in their operations by other political views of the ancient sages. Neither Confucius nor Mencius would allow for an instant that any foreigner had a right to consider himself as an equal with a native of the Middle Kingdom. 'Indulgent treatment of men from a distance," with dutiful submission on their part to the commands of the Son of Heaven, were the conditions which Confucius recommended in dealing with foreigners; and Mencius gives us his estimate of the Gentile nations when he said, "I have heard of men using the doctrines of our great land to change barbarians, but I never yet heard of any being changed by barbarians. I have heard of birds leaving dark valleys to remove to lofty trees, but I have not heard of their descending from lofty trees to enter into dark