Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 427

1850.

Notices of Coal in China.

389

three hundred years, but Chinese antiquarians refer its use to a re- mote period in their history. Its utility in the arts has been appreci- ated at Peking for more than a thousand years, as may be inferred from the encomiums bestowed upon it by a poet of the Sung dynasty, who lands it as useful in the manufacture of iron implements. A writer in the early part of the seventh century mentions the article. The earliest notice of coal is in the history of the Hán dynasty, B.C. 202 to A.D. 25, where the remark occurs that Kiảngsi produced stones, which were used as fuel.

To appreciate rightly the value of these vast coal deposits, extend- ing from Corea to Siam, regard must be had to the increasing com- merce of the Pacific, to the revolution which seems on the eve of tak- ing place in the route of communication with western nations, and to the prospective greatness of the Anglo-Saxon states springing into existence on its eastern shores; of their capacity, aided with the ap- pliances of foreign skill and capital to supply all demands which the steam-engine may make upon them, both for manufactures and navi- gation, there can exist no doubt.

Nor have these primeval forests been stored upon the continent alone; they abound in more accessible situations, isolated, as it were express- ly for steam navigation, in the islands of Japan, Formosa, and Borneo. Before the application of steain and coal to navigation, a sceptical philosophy might have questioned the utility of deposits of this mine- ral in the torrid zone, and immediately under the equator, but the design of the Omniscient Artificer of this beautiful sphere is now obvious, affording another evidence that He left nothing to fortuitous circumstances, and another lesson fraught with instruction for reflec- tive minds. May the name of the immense sheet of water, on whose shores Infinite Beneficence has scattered this mineral, indicate the peaceful purposes of all who traverse it, that both eleinents may con- tribute to the diffusion of commerce and civilization in fusing hostile races into a common brotherhood!

Ningpo, February 1st, 1850.