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He traces this to the fact that female in- | nese arts form together the Chinese school. struction has fallen out of use. He then The author describes several of the chari. appeals to the classics for evidence that table institutions of America. To an ap girls ought to be educated, and this, he preciative account of the large asylum for says, would prove the true cure for the evil orphans at Philadelphia he appends what practice of female infanticide. But, he a countryman of his own had done for adds, matters are carried too far, when, as young criminals. He was magistrate at occurred in the fifth month of the year in Yü yau, near Ningpo. He was accuswhich he wrote, he saw in the newspapers tomed to take young thieves and have a statement that a woman had said pub- them taught a trade instead of punishing licly that in the impending election for them. While they were learning he went president of the United States it was a himself, when he had leisure, and exhorted crying injustice that women could not be them to change their habit of stealing and nominated for that high post. He records lead a good life. They were, when the with great pleasure the favorable opinions handicraft was learned, discharged on the he heard from foreigners of various coun- surety of their relatives or their neighbors, tries with regard to the taste and elegance or the tradesmen who had instructed them. observable in Chinese manufactures. The consequence was that in that district While Japan was struggling at Philadel- thefts were soon entirely unknown, and the phia to imitate and rival Western ingenuity town and neighborhood became noted for on the basis of Western ideas, he rejoices the honesty of the inhabitants. The authat China was able, without imitating for- thor tells this story to show from the side of eign nations, to obtain from impartial Chinese experience that the proper way to judges willing recognition of her fair claims deal with young thieves is to have them to superiority in many points over all taught some craft by which they may earn other nations in matters of ingenuity and an honest living. After describing the taste, and the combination of utility with Philadelphia Mint he discusses the advanelegance of form. It was agreed that tage of a mint in China. He shows the inChina held the first place at the Centenary convenience in the present use of silver Exhibition in silk, tea, silk fabrics, carved by weight as a standard of value in comornaments, and in vases of the King-t'ai merce. He urges the arguments used by period. A lower place was assigned to foreigners in favor of silver coinage. He lacquer ware, bronzes and silver, and bam describes the school at Hartford, where boo ornaments of Chinese make. He de- one hundred and forty Chinese youths and tails for the information of his countrymen boys are under instruction. In the house the objections made in America and else- occupied by them is a chamber set apart where to the imperfect preparation for the for the worship of Confucius, with a tablet market of Chinese silk and tea. He having the sage's title inscribed on it. strongly urges on his countrymen to adopt There is also a small apartment for makbetter methods. The favorable judgment ing prostrations to the emperor, whose pronounced on the productions of Japan tablet is also placed there. Each youth and China exhibited at Philadelphia has costs the government about 120l. a year. been repeated at Paris. Observers admire They went in a body to Philadelphia to the obvious utility, elegance, and ingenuity see the exhibition, and while there were of the objects sent by Chinese and Japan- introduced to the president, who took ese exhibitors. It must, then, be admitted kindly notice of them all. The education that these races have no mean gifts in the of these youths will extend over ten or fifregion of art. They have the power to teen years. After this time they will be conceive and to execute original and beau- available for the consulates which China tiful objects of utility. We must pardon will by that time have established for Chithe Chinese who a thousand years ago nese legations, for the customs' service taught their arts to Japan if they feel some in China, and for interpreting on behalf of pride in the position that is now cheerfully mandarins at the open ports. He pays assigned to them by Western connois- special attention to gun-foundries and seurs. If they cannot fight so well as arsenals. In these, China officials feel Western nations, or originate such mag- profound interest, being convinced that nificent inventions as the railway and tele- power lies in artillery. They mistake the graph, they have a field of excellence cause for the effect, and seem to believe where they need not fear competition. The that the Western nations prosper because lacquer ware and bronzes of Japan must they have efficient weapons of war. For be regarded as indirectly the productions of some years to come travellers from China Chinese skill. The Japanese and Chi-I will therefore continue to describe the lat

From The Pall Mall Gazette.
THE OLD BED OF THE OXUS.

Hodja

est military and naval inventions in order | he informed that he had "matter of great to gratify the interest felt in them by Chi- State importance to disclose to the Rusnese viceroys. The author has made an sian emperor." Prince Simonof sent enormous mistake in stating the sum ex- Nefes to St. Petersburg with a letter to pended in the construction of the Suez Prince Alexander Bekovitch Cherkasski. Canal. He says that it cost three hundred Prince Bekovitch, who was an officer in million pounds sterling. This is at least the Imperial Guard and much in favor thirty times the actual outlay. with the czar, presented Nefes and another Turcoman to Peter the Great, when the secret which Nefes wished to communicate proved to be that "in the country bordering the River Amou gold sand was procured, and that the river, which formerly flowed into the Caspian, and which, THE announcement that the Amou- from apprehension of the Russians, had Darya has returned to its old bed is calcu- been diverted by the Usbegs (Khivans) lated to puzzle those newspaper readers into the Aral, might, by destroying the who have hitherto taken but a languid dam, be made again to run in its old chaninterest in central Asian affairs. Most nel a work in which the Russians would rivers have but one bed. The Oxus, how-be assisted by the Turcomans." ever, or "Amou-Darya," as that famous Nefes' statements were to some extent stream is called by the Turcomans and confirmed by one Ashur-Bek, Khivan the Russians, has two- one of which envoy at the Russian court, who asserted disembogues at a point on the southern positively both that the Oxus at its sources shore of the Aral Lake, from ninety to a brought down gold, and that the stream hundred miles due north of Khiva; while had been diverted from its old channel by the other in former times emptied itself by the Khivans, who, he added, would not the Balkan Creek into Krasnovodsk Bay, interfere with the work of turning its one of the inlets on the south-eastern coast waters into their ancient bed should the of the Caspian Sea. The Oxus was turned Russians determine to perform it. out of its old bed leading to the Caspian Peter proposed, in the first place, to into the new one leading to the Aral Lake construct at the place of the "Red Waters" by means of a dam erected, within three (Krasnovodsk), where the Oxus had foror four days' march of Khiva, if not at a merly entered the Caspian, a fort capaprehistoric period, at a period of which ble of accommodating one thousand men; history has preserved no record. The and Ashur-Bek was himself of opinion date, however, of this notable diversion that Krasnovodsk was the point on which must be fixed at some time after the ex- the fort should stand. Soon afterwards pulsion of the Tartars from Russia; since this complaisant ambassador left St. Pe the operation is known to have been due tersburg on his way home. Peter charged to fear of the Russian power and its threat him with a mission, or at least gave him ened extension in an easterly direction. credentials of some kind. But he was not In one of Mr. Robert Michell's invaluable the man to place trust in a servant who translations from the Russian, for the use had shown himself willing to betray his of the India Office, an interesting account master; and Ashur-Bek, on arriving at is given of the first reception by the Rus- Astrakhan, found that he would not be sians, one hundred and sixty-five years allowed to proceed any further. In vain ago, of information as to the double bed he addressed letters to the commandant of of the Amou-Darya, concerning which Astrakhan wishing "good health to the they seem up to that time to have known White Czar," and to the commandant himnothing. The inhabitants of Astrakhan, self long life and every comfort. He was Russian as well as Tartar, had long been kept a prisoner at Astrakhan for upwards of in the habit of crossing over from Astra- two years. Peter did not care much about khan to the north-eastern extremity of the reaching Khiva or Khiva and Bokhara Caspian immediately opposite, and of trad-alone. But he looked upon these countries ing there with the Turcomans, when in as lying on the road to richer lands; and he the year 1713 an eminent Turcoman, Hodja-Nefes by name, accompanied a party of Russian merchants on their return voyage to Astrakhan. There HodjaNefes waited upon Prince Michael Simonof. a Persian settled in Russia, whom

saw that if the largest river of central Asia could really be turned into the Caspian, India, or the confines of India, might be reached by water. If the news given by the Russian newspapers as to the destruction of the dam near Khiva be true, then

direct water communication may ere long | earth three feet high by seven feet wide be established by way of the Volga, the extending nearly eleven miles and washed Caspian, and the Oxus, between St. Pe- along the whole line by the Oxus, which tersburg and Afghan Turkestan, between was at that time flooded just as it is said the Ladoga Lake and the slopes of the to have been the other day when, without Hindoo Koosh. Before taking any deci- the assistance of engineers and by its own sive steps, before even building a fort at natural force, it burst through its ancient Krasnovodsk, Peter resolved to send a dam. reconnoitring expedition along what the Turcomans declared to be the old bed of the river as far as the point where, according to their statements, the dam had been constructed. Prince Alexander Bekovitch Cherkasski, who had presented the Turcoman Hodja-Nefes to the czar, was appointed to the command of the expedition; and early in 1714 Prince Bekovitch was despatched to Khiva, or at least in the direction of the Khivan capital, as if for the purpose of congratulating a new khan who had just ascended the throne.

After an unsuccessful attempt to cross the Caspian, which was full of ice at the time, Prince Bekovitch made a second endeavor with good effect, and, reaching the camping-grounds on the east coast of the Caspian, summoned the chiefs of the Turcoman tribes, and questioned them about the discharge of the River Oxus into the Caspian Sea, and as to the possibility of diverting the stream into its old channel. The Turcomans declared that the course of the Oxus had indeed been turned; and that if a canal of about thirteen miles were dug to a gully known to them, and which was said to be the old bed of the river, the water would once more flow into the Caspian at the "Red Waters," otherwise Krasnovodsk Bay. To obtain confirmation of this statement, Bekovitch sent two Astrakhan nobles, together with Hodja-Nefes, the Turcoman, who knew the country, to the place where the dam was said to turn the waters. They were instructed, after reaching the dam, to return by the old bed of the river to Krasnovodsk Bay, where the former mouth of the Oxus was supposed to be; and to that point of rendezvous Prince Bekovitch sailed with the whole of his force from the spot where he had encountered the Turcoman chiefs on the east coast of the Caspian. From this place Tiub-Karagan by name to Khiva there was a road, and along this Hodja-Nefes led the two Russians from Astrakhan. After a fortnight's journey on camels they came to Karagatch, a Khivan boundary settlement, through which lay the great caravan road from Astrakhan to Khiva; and here within two versts (one mile and a third) of the Oxus was an embankment of

Leaving the great Khiva road on their right, the explorers proceeded across the steppe, and after travelling about sixteen miles came in sight of the gully which the Turcomans assured them was the old bed of the river. They marched three days along this gully to the Ata-Ibrahim settlement, noticing the traces of former settlements and towns on both sides. They also found traces of canals leading from various parts of the gully to former fields and dwelling-places, which confirmed them in the opinion that the river had actually flowed there in bygone days. HodjaNefes assured the two Russians from Astrakhan that the gully which they had followed from Ata-Ibrahim continued all the way to the Caspian Sea; but he abso lutely refused to conduct them any further, fearing, he said, an attack from Khivan or other robbers. With this information the party joined Prince Bekovitch at the "Red Waters." But the exploration, though fully satisfactory so far as it went, had been by no means complete; and the prince despatched another Russian of Astrakhan with a party of Turcomans to examine the gully from the Caspian as far as Ata-Ibrahim. The Turcomans did not conduct the Russians so far as that place. But they went a considerable distance towards it, and far enough to convince the Russian and Prince Bekovitch, who received the Russian's report, that the gully on the Caspian side and the gully on the Ata-Ibrahim side joined so as to form one continuous channel. Prince Bekovitch considered that the ancient bed of the Oxus had now been discovered, and felt sure that the river had formerly emptied itself, by Balkan Creek, into Krasnovodsk Bay. He reported the result of his exploration to the czar, and forwarded to him maps drawn up by himself of the east coast of the Caspian.

Peter, on receiving the prince's report and maps, ordered that the latter should be verified, and commissioned a naval officer to undertake the work. Prince Bekovitch Cherkasski was at the same time summoned to Libau, in the Baltic provinces, where Peter formally commissioned him to take the command of a military expedition, which was to proceed

along the ancient bed of the Oxus to Khiva. The expeditionary force was to consist of six thousand men - infantry and cavalry-of whom one thousand were to guard the fort which it had been resolved to build at the former mouth of the Oxus, in Krasnovodsk Bay. A second fort was to be constructed at Karagatch, either close to the embankment or at any other point suitable for the diversion of the stream into its old channel; and a detachment was to march from Krasnovodsk along the old bed of the Oxus up to the actual river, where it was to leave a force in the newly-raised fort, and then march to Khiva along the river bank, "carefully studying the current of the Oxus, and the dams, so as to form a judgment as to the practicability of damming the course of the stream then flowing into the Aral Lake, and the amount of labor that would be required for performing the work." Khiva was to be reached by two separate columns, of which the principal one, five thousand strong, was to march from Gurief, on the north coast of the Caspian, close to the mouth of the Ural River, as far as Karagatch, where it was to halt and construct the fort already spoken of; while the second and lesser column, one thousand strong, marching from Krasnovodsk along the old bed of the river, was to man the fort, and afterwards follow the chief column to Khiva. The expedition as a whole was to call itself the escort of a caravan, and some thirty merchants, with their attendants, were really to accompany it. Five thousand troops formed rather a large escort for a caravan consisting of thirty merchants and one hundred and sixty-five attendants; but the leader of the force professed to have none but commercial and diplomatic objects in view.

As so often happens with combined expeditions, one portion of the expeditionary force never reached its destination. The Krasnovodsk column does not seem to have started, so difficult was it found to procure the requisite number of camels. Thus the project of reconnoitring the old bed of the Oxus along its entire length from Krasnovodsk to Karagatch, at four days' march from Khiva, was not carried out. After some very rapid marching, executed under trying circumstances, during two months of the hottest period of the year, Prince Bekovitch arrived at Karagatch, and would no doubt, in accordance with his instructions, have built a fort near the Oxus embankment had he not suddenly been attacked by the Khivans; and, al

though the Khivan forces were on this occasion easily repulsed, Bekovitch's expedition is known to have ended in the destruction of the entire force. Meanwhile nothing had been done towards diverting the course of the Oxus ; and, although Peter gave signs of an intention to send out a second expedition, no further attempt was made towards turning the river or even towards exploring the ancient channel along its entire length from Krasnovodsk Bay to Karagatch, until the expedition of Perofski in 1837. This expedition, which, though not attended with such disastrous results, was in one sense far less successful than that of Prince Bekovitch (since it was stopped by the snow and by the loss of nearly the whole of the camels before it had marched a quarter of the distance to Khiva), had originally been announced as a scientific expedition undertaken "for the purpose of exploring the shores of the Aral Lake and the ancient bed of the Oxus." But Perofski did not go near the ancient bed of the Oxus; and, though during General Kaufmann's time expeditions for visiting the ancient bed of the Oxus and determining the practicability of restoring the river to its former course have frequently been reported, these have usually been regarded as expeditions directed against the Turcomans; and it is tolerably certain that more than one of these so-called scientific expeditions has approached Merv. It sometimes happens, however, that the victims of deception end by deceiving themselves; and if the news now published by the Russian newspapers as to the destruction of the Oxus embankment and the return of the river to its old bed be true, it must be concluded that the detachments alleged on so many occasions to have been sent out with the view of determining the question of the old bed of the river were really despatched with that view. They may have wished at the same time to operate against the Tekke Turcomans. But the seizure and annexation of Merv would be as nothing compared with the conquest or creation of a new waterway from the Caspian to Khiva and the various countries washed by the upper Oxus in the region to the north of Afghanistan and of Cashmere. It does not of course follow, even if the river had been brought back to its old course, from Karagatch all the way to Krasnovodsk Bay, that the stream would be navigable from the Caspian upwards. Apart, however, from the question of navigation, the conversion of the Oxus into its ancient channel would bring water into a steppe of

sand and enable the Russians to march from Krasnovodsk to Khiva by a route not more than three hundred and sixty miles in length, across a desert which they have hitherto, for want of water, been unable to traverse in any large force.

From The Academy.

HANS HENDRIK.

and she gainsaid me, and begged me not to join them; but I replied, "If no mischief happen me I shall return, and I shall earn money for thee; but certainly I pity my dear younger brothers who have not grown food-winners as yet, especially the youngest, Nathaniel.” At last we started, and when we left my countrymen and relatives, to be sure it was very disheartening. Still, I thought, if I do not perish I shall return. How strange! This was not to be fulfilled.

Hans, it must be remembered, though a THE annals of literature, although lived in the southern part of it, and had dweller within the Arctic circle, had always abounding with the productions of count therefore never experienced any long peless authors representing all ages and riod of darkness. His terror and astonnearly all nations, have hitherto been una-ishment at the excessive darkness and ble to record the existence of a work ema-long-continued absence of the sun in their nating from the brain, and transmitted by first winter quarters in latitude 79o is rethe pen, of an Eskimo. That deficiency lated in the following graphic manner: — has now been supplied. The work before us is the plain, unvarnished history of the life and adventures of one of those wandering nomads who pass their lives in months of ceaseless sunshine and months of endless darkness as chronicled by himself.

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Those who have interested themselves in the work of polar exploration, and have read the various narratives of the more recent Arctic expedition, published by the commanders on their return, cannot fail to be acquainted with the name of Hans Hendrik.

We first hear of him in 1853, when he was but a lad some seventeen years of age, accompanying Dr. Kane, the eminent American Arctic explorer, in the capacity of hunter and dog-driver to the expedition. Readers of Dr. Kane's admirable description of this voyage will be able, in a manner, to realize the hardships and sufferings endured by our hero during two terribly

severe winters. On this occasion he was the sole companion of Moreton when he reported his great discovery of an “open Polar Sea," now proved to have no exist

ence.

The author's account of how he first accepted employment with the Americans, and his parting from home, is thus laconically described:

I heard that they were looking for a native companion, and that his parents should have payment during his absence. Nobody being willing, I, Hans Hendrik, finally took a liking to join them, and I said I would go. The ship's master tried to get one assistant more, but did not succeed.

I went to inform my mother of my intention

*Memoirs of Hans Hendrik, the Arctic Traveller. Written by Himself. Translated from the Eskimo Language by Dr. Henry Rink. (Trübner.)

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Then it really grew winter and dreadfully cold, and the sky speedily darkened. Never had I seen the dark season like this; to be sure it was awful; I thought we should have and fell a-weeping; I never in my life saw no daylight any more. I was seized with fright,

such darkness at noon-time. As the darkness
continued for three months, I really believed
we should have no daylight more. However,
finally it dawned, and brightness having set in,
I used to go shooting hares.
That our hero was a keen and successful
sportsman is fully exemplified, not only by
his own words and he certainly regards
his hunting excursions as the most impor-
tant duties connected with an Arctic expe-
dition — but also by the statements of
the different commanders with whom he
served, who testify to his skill and energy,
and aver that the lives of many of his
scurvy-stricken comrades were undoubt-
edly saved by his promptitude in procuring
game.

Instead of returning to the southward with Dr. Kane, Hans elected to remain and take his chance with a more northerly tribe, called by Sir John Ross the Arctic Highlanders, with whom he lived for several years. He thus describes his attachment to them:

At length I wholly attached myself to them, and followed them when they removed to the south. I got the man of highest standing among them as my foster father, and when I had dwelled several winters with them, I began to think of taking a wife, although an unchristened one. First, I went a-wooing to a girl of good morals, but I gave her up, as her father said: "Take my sister." The latter was a widow and ill-reputed. Afterwards I got a sweetheart whom I resolved never to part with, but to keep as my wife in the country of the Christians. Since then she has been baptized and partaken of the Lord's Supper.

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