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EAST ASIA.
EAST AND WEST CONTRASTED.
Compared with Western Asia, and especially with Europe, which may in
certain respects be regarded as a group of peninsulas belonging to Asia, the eastern
regions of the continent enjoy certain privileges, but have also some great disadvantages
as lands of human culture. The most striking
contrast between East
and West is presented by their respective
seaboards. In Asia Minor and Europe
the coast lands arc cut up into numerous peninsulas, forming secondary groups in
the Mediterranean and Atlantic waters. The peninsulas
are moreover prolonged
by archipelagos, or the coasts fringed with islands; so that Europe has by Carl
Ritter and others been compared to an organized body well furnished with limbs.
This continent seems, so to say, endowed with life and motion beyond the dead mass
of the Old World. But China cannot boast of such a surprising diversity
of out-
lines. From the shores of Manchuria to those of Cochin China one important penin-
sula alone, that of Corea, is detached from the continental mass, while the land is
penetrated only by one gulf deserving the name of sea the Hoang-hai. The Pacific
waters are here doubtless animated by two large islands, Formosa and Hainan, and
by the magnificent Archipelago of Japan. But how insignificant are these peninsulas
and islands of Eastern Asia compared with the Cyclades and Sporades, Greece
and Italy, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the whole of Europe, itself a vast
to the moist and warm sea breezes !
peninsula everywhere exposed
The high degree of culture attained by the Chinese people cannot therefore be
explained by any exceptional advantages in peninsular or island formations. But
here the absence of marine inlets has been partly supplied by the great rivers. If
the Chinese seaboard proper presents but few deep indentations, the great streams
of navigable water by which the land is irrigated, and by whose ramifications and
canals it is divided into inland islands and peninsulas, give it some of the advan-
tages in water communication enjoyed by Europe. Here the Yang-tze-kiaug and
Hoang-ho replace the vEgean and Tyrrhenian Seas, and like them have served to
develop and dilfu.se a common civilisation. Formerly China had another advantage
in the possession of the largest extent of productive land held under one social
system in a temperate climate. North America and Europe, which at present
pOHNM all equal extent of such territory, were till recently still covered by forests
which had to be laboriously cleared. In China is found that vast stretch of
" Yellow Lauds " which forms pre-eminently an agricultural region, and where were
naturally developed those peaceful habits which are acquired by the pursuits of
husbandry. To tlnV region are attached other arable lauds possessing a different
soil. and climate, with corresponding an'mal and vegetable forms, and thus it came
about that civilised life encroached step by step on the vast domain stretching from
the Mongolian wast es to the shores of the Gulf of Tonkin. These conditions admitted
of much variety in cultivating the land, and thus was trade developed between the
different provinces. All partial improvements reacted beneficially on the whole land,
and the general civilisation was easily promoted amongst the Chinese themselves
and in the neighbouring countries. Comparing East Asia with the Western world.