In the year 1832-'33 there were sixty American ships at Canton, and our trade was even then valued at nearly $17, 000,000 per annum. The first American missionary was Robert Morrison, a man of great learning and ability, who arrived in China in 1807.

America commenced direct diplomatic negotiations with China in 1844, when Caleb Cushing signed the treaty of Wanghia. Since then there have been only the slightest breaks in the entente cordiale between China and the United States.

New treaties have been drawn up when necessary, and American trade has grown more rapidly than that of any other foreign nation engaged in the competition for the control and profits of Asiatic markets.

Our commercial opportunity in China, which is a favorite theme of mine for discussion prompted by many years of official and private study and residence in Asia, is the greatest in potentialities of any beyond our shores. Today our trade exchange with China, including Hongkong, is valued at $45,000,000 per annum, and yet it is in the infancy of its development. Making conservative estimate on the basis that the "open door" is preserved in China, that the interior of the Empire is made accessible by railways, and that the government becomes progressive, there is no valid reason why our commerce with Cathay in 1925 should not have grown tenfold and be valued at $450,000,000.

These possibilities remind us of the supreme necessity of the protection of our treaty rights throughout all China, from Manchuria to Kwangtung. It is gratifying that President McKinley and Secretary Hay are shaping our policy at Pekin with reference to the importance of our interests, present and future. We want and will take no territory, no ports, but we contend for the unhampered privilege of trading everywhere in China on the same basis and with the same privileges, without discrimination, as any and all foreign nations.

After the maintenance of the "open door," the chief object of American effort in the matter of commerce would seem to be the abolition of the so-called Lekin or interior taxes on foreign goods when they have left the treaty ports for their destination. It is no exaggeration to predict that the foreign trade with China would double in five years if the duty paid at the custom-house was the only burden on foreign imports. The chief object in the new commercial treaties which will be negotiated at the conclusion of the present difficulties will be the protection of foreign imports from Lekin, barrier, and destination taxes, or "squeezes.

AMERICAN INTERESTS IN MANCHURIA

The

The future of Manchuria directly concerns the United States. In one way we have more at stake than any other nation. More American products are sold there than in any other portion of China. American imports to Manchuria exceed those of any other nation. outlook in ordinary conditions for the increase of American trade in Manchuria is better than elsewhere in Asia, and hence the situation appeals to American export interests, especially to the cotton industries of the Southern States.

I am making no comment on the diplomatic issue at stake, nor on the policy of Russia, but I am telling the simple. truth about Manchuria's importance. Having crossed it from Niuchwang to Vladivostok by way of Kirin and Mukden, I can say that it is prospectively one of the best sections of China, capable of supporting a large population and providing an extended market. When I first visited Niuchwang, some eight years ago, American imports were barely worth 15 per cent of the total; when I went there last, in 1898, they were 50 per cent of the total and were still growing. It is the Manchurian demand, for instance, that has caused the wonderful increase to $10,000,000 in the value of

our manufactured cotton goods sold in China. The demand for flour, oil, manufactured iron and steel bids fair to increase in like proportion if the door of trade is not closed against us.

If, now, I should summarize public opinion in regard to China and our policy, as it has been my privilege to test it in addressing commercial and missionary organizations in all parts of the United States from San Francisco to New York and Chicago to New Orleans, I should state, first, that public sentiment, regardless of party, is undoubtedly heartily in sympathy with our Government's policy, and, second, that if this opinion were crystallized into specific expectations it would name the following provisions :

1. Every legitimate effort should be made to preserve the integrity of the Chinese Empire and the freedom of trade throughout its extent as originally outlined in the old treaties, while needed reforms in administration of government and foreign intercourse are duly advocated and pressed.

2. Indemnities should not be demanded by government, missionaries, or merchants except within the lowest reasonable limits, and the entire question of indemnities and kindred issues should be referred to an International Tribunal of Arbitration as provided by the Hague Peace Treaty.

3. New treaties of commerce and amity should be negotiated as soon as is practicable by the ministers at Pekin which will give every nation equal rights of trade throughout all China, provide for the abolition of the Lekin and other offensive taxes, and insure the "open door" for commerce and Christianity alike.

4. Charity and not revenge, with punishment only for those responsibly guilty and within the Chinese Government's power to punish, should characterize the demands of merchants and missionaries, as well as of our Government, for in

that way we will eventually win the lasting gratitude and favor of China's government and people, strengthen our own position, and develop the best guarantees within and without China for an open door" for both God and Mammon.

Finally, we note that a study of Chinese history and character enables us to understand better the mighty influences now at work in China. It forces us to draw certain remarkable conclusions that throw light upon the present crisis at Pekin, but which are not generally remembered in popular discussion of the problem before us.

CONCLUSION

There is danger of misunderstanding and underrating the people and the possibilities of China in war and in peace, because the wonderful past of the empire is not commonly known.

First. It may seem surprising, but it is a truthful statement in the light of history, that the Chinese, if necessary, are a warlike people. They are born warriors. They inherit a capacity and tendency to fight from a longer line of fighting ancestors than is the heritage of any or all of the Powers now arrayed against them at Pekin. The soldier may be unpopular in the social and political life of the empire from the teachings of the classics, but the salient fact remains that wars and soldiers have engaged the attention of the empire and people more than peace and scholars during her fifty centuries of sway. The lack of an organized army is a mere passing incident of the times.

Second. The recent Boxer uprising and seizure of the legations, while they rightly appear in the judgment of the hour to be fraught with great possible results both to China and the foreign world, are secondary events when compared to scores of uprisings and difficulties in China's seventy cycles and

twenty-five dynasties. The massacres, men engaged and killed, area of disturbance, and vexations of settlement and indemnity are, after all, limited when we balance against them the events of centuries that are gone.

Third. The end of China is not yet. If she is divided, it will in history be only a temporary division, but one suggestive of revenge and consequent danger to the white and Christian races.

If she is not divided, a new and grander period of progress and civilization will surely follow the troubles and haze of the past sixty years, just as has been the almost invariable experience of the great past. Men and means will be forthcoming to build up this newer China. Whether this era is inspired from within or without, whether it comes with a new dynasty, a new emperor, or with the present emperor supported by foreign hands, the world will yet see greater things in China than it has ever

viewed in America or Europe. As China's 400,000,000 people must by law of nature increase to countless more millions, and as her 4,000,000 square miles, with their vast unsurpassed resources, must inevitably respond to material development, so her 4,000 years of history as a nation and people, with their rich experience, their reserve energy, their conservatism, their recuperative capacity, their homogeneity, teach us to believe that China will survive successfully the present crisis.

Is not, therefore, the policy of our Government-that of mingled firmness and charity—a wise one?

If we protect our treaty rights, demand just punishment without revenge, respect China's inalienable prerogatives, and show dignified generosity in the evolution of the new status, we shall have China's 400,000,000 people as our lasting friends rather than our everlasting enemies.

T

HERE is an exhibit in the Ethnology Building at the PanAmerican Exposition in Buffalo that will be of special interest to archæologists, as it represents a discovery so recent that no previous exposition has had the opportunity of exhibiting it to the world. It is the remains of the Indian village of Baum.

Prof. William C. Mills, of Columbus, Ohio, curator of the Ohio Archæological and Historical Society, who was instrumental in the finding of Baum, came to Buffalo to install this exhibit. Most of it is placed in glass cases, but the central feature is a little graveyard on the floor-space directly under the great dome. It is bounded by an iron railing, within which black loamy soil has been neatly packed as a bed for the prehis

toric skeletons it has been Professor Mills' ghoulish task to arrange. Bone by bone he unpacked them and fitted them together into the ghastly semblance of men, women, and little children. There they lie in the same relative positions in which they were found in buried Baum.

So new and yet so old is Baum that only a few of the best informed even know its name. It was discovered last year, in Ross County, Ohio, and was named for the man who owned the property. Archæologists in the Indian field consider it one of the greatest finds of the century. The village encircled one of those great mounds that have so long been the wonder and curiosity of latterday races. Mound and village have thus helped to interpret each other. Wise

men have read strange stories in the bones and stones they found there, and both are laid out now, like an open book, in the Ethnology Building for the public to peruse.

On the ground above the village trees were growing that had sprouted not less than eight hundred years ago. The people whose tools and toys we contemplate today had rotted in their graves four hundred years before Columbus saw America. If they were there when the Norsemen visited Vineland the Good, neither people learned of the other. There is absolutely no suggestion in any of their relics that they had ever had the remotest contact with a European race. They were a primitive, aboriginal people, that returned to the soil as mysteriously as they sprang from it.

The implements they fashioned out of the rude materials about them show that they had reached a high degree of civilization for a prehistoric people. It is marvelous to see to what uses they put the bones of animals. From the bones of deer, bear, coon, and wild turkey they fashioned needles, awls, fish-hooks, and arrow-points. Not only are there plenty of fish-hooks made from bone, but there are pieces of bone to show the various stages of manufacture.

What a patient creature was the primitive man! How pathetic are the traces of his first early struggles to create! There are the pieces of bone which he had slowly hollowed and polished and cut to make a hook. There, too, are his failures, the hooks that he broke before he had done, the eloquent tokens of bootless pains.

Side by side with bone arrow-points are those of flint. Probably each weapon had its advocates. Flint knives, flint drills, tell of rude skill definitely directed. A stone awl-sharpener bespeaks the careful workman.

In the collection is a small carved stone. The characters on it are quite plain to all, rude as they are, but the

interpretation is not clear. Wigwams are indicated by a few artistic strokes of the knife. Nearby are a turtle and a fox, and above is a watchful eye looking down on all. What is the story the Indian artist tried to tell?

Some pieces of pottery were found that make one think of the modern Mexican's handiwork. The bowls are rudely wrought, but a stone slab, with a stone roller, is almost the exact counterpart of the Mexican metate. Like the Mexican woman of today, the squaw of old knelt patiently, hour after hour, grinding corn on the metate for the simple maize cakes that were the staff of life. Corn of the eight-rowed and ten-rowed variety was found in the buried village; also beans, wild grapes, papaw seed, walnuts, hickory, wild plum, chestnuts, and hazel nuts.

Turtle shells, used for drinking cups, and stone pipes of really dainty cut are among the recovered treasures. Discoidal stones with holes in them suggest games of chance, such as all early people delighted in.

Many of these articles are found in ash-pits or refuse heaps that had been sunk about the village to keep it in tidy condition. Others were found in the graves. Ornaments, in the shape of bone or bead necklaces, were discovered with the skeletons of children in particular. The teeth of the elk, cut and perforated, are plentiful in some graves.

It is strange that nowhere does one find human bones used for utilitarian purposes. There are awls made from the tibia-tarsus of the wild turkey, from the shoulder blades and from the ulna of deer and elk, but nothing from the human scapula or femur. One of the most interesting collections is that of scrapers, used to remove the hair from the hides of animals, to dress them for raiment. They are made from the metacarpal bones of the deer and elk, and great quantities of them were found.

Among the heaps of bones were many

that had a strangely familiar look to Professor Mills. They carried him back to his boyhood days and reminded him of the bones his pet dog used to gnaw. So he began to look for the dog, and he found him, the early Indian canine, with a skull like a modern bull terrier's. He, too, has gone to the happy hunting grounds of his father.

The Historical Society, of which Professor Mills is curator, is interested in preserving archæological and historical

relics to posterity. The famous Fort Ancient, in Warren County, has been set aside by the society's endeavors in a park of 300 acres for public edification. The great Serpent Mound, in Adams County, has been similarly emparked. It is an embankment 1,300 feet long and three feet high, which is an eloquent monument to human endeavor, and as such should be preserved. H. C. BROWN.

T

THE geography of Abyssinia is now fairly well known as far as the rivers and boundaries are concerned, but there is a great deal to be learned regarding the Danakil country on the east and the country to the south and southwest. The best maps of the country are those made by the Italians, but they are rather bewildering by the number of names they contain of unimportant little places consisting, perhaps, of three or four houses. Unless a map is made on a very large scale, say two inches to a mile, it is impossible to put in all the villages and local names for the small streams, etc. Many of the mountains are differently called by the inhabitants of the various slopes, and therefore names are not always to be relied on. If the local market towns are marked and those villages that possess a church, travelers. will have no difficulty in finding their way about the country, and supplies can generally be purchased on market days to enable them to proceed from one market town to another.

The Italian colony of Erithrea, which bounds Abyssinia on the north, is well surveyed, the heights of mountains,

government stations, and plateaus have all been determined, and statistics of rainfall and temperature are kept and published. Abyssinia is not at all a difficult country to travel in on account of the very conspicuous landmarks and the enormous extent of the landscape that is visible from the various high mountains. The atmosphere in the highlands is wonderfully clear, and enormous distances can be seen. From Halai, in the north, the Semien Mountains are visible on a clear day. Above Wandach the Semien can also be seen, and from Wandach the mountains to the north of Ifat, and from there the mountains round Cunni, in the Harar province, are visible, and it might be possible, perhaps, to heliograph from one point to the other. Part of Halai range

is also visible from Massowah on a clear day.

The climate in the highlands of Abyssinia is superb, and it is only in the valleys that it is unhealthy and that malarial fever is to be caught. There is a great discussion going on at present about the mosquito, and it seems curious to me, who have lived in so many unhealthy parts of the East, that the at