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September 26, 1903.]
CORRESPONDENCE.
MARCO PO O AND THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY PRESS.
Holbow, 17th September. SIR,-In the last paragraph of your interest ing review of the 3rd edition of Yale's Marco Polo reference is made to Polo's failure to mention the Great Wall of China and to the discredit which has been thrown upon his work ou that account,
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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
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Great Wall being evidence against the accuracy | portion. The only way that he could explain of Marco Polo, I think that the silence of Marco | the lightness of the ink in places was that the Polo is evidenco against the greatness and in peu got empty at that particular moment. He places of the very existence of the Great Wall, ould also like to remark that in the early part and that it never merited the title of " the most of the case the documents were described by noticeable work of mau on the globe.-Yours, the defendant in his affidavit as promissory. eto.,
notes, and it was only later on that he E. T. C. WERNER. found out that they were acknowledgments of indebtedness. There were two reasons SUPREME COURT.
why he could not conceive that these should be forgeries. If the same man was going to make additions it seemed to him, that Saturday, 19th September
he would have been a fool if he did not try to keep the writing closer, and if the time had been. altered why was it not made payment on demand instead of a monta hence? With re- gard to the tulegram, his opinion was that it was seat with the intention of stating that the asse's were worth $37,300, and he had a strong suspicion that the letter was invented for the purpose of the present case. Under the circumstances it seemed to him that he was and he would therefore give judgment for bound to believe plaintiffs and not defendants plaintiffs with costs and interest.
IN SUMMARY JURISDICTION.
BEFORE III HONOUR A. G. ISE (PUISNE JUDGY).
HOP BHING TONG v. KWOK CHUI HUI,
Judgment was given in the action brought by Kwongsui Hing, Kwoog Kam Chuen, Lau Chung Ming, and Tang Pui Cheong, alias Pui Cheung Tong, trading under the name of op Shing Tong, against Kwok Chui Hin, of 18, Connaught Road Central, to recover the sum of $1,000 due on a promissory note given by the defendant to the plaintiffs, and dated 31st May, 1903.
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The words there used and the Chiuese work referred to remind me of a theory broached by me in a paper read some fifteen years ago before the Royal Archeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and subsequently published in its Journal, which is iu faqt the theory quoted by your reviewer, namely, that the real old great wall had fallen into decay, and the new, or Ming, wall had not been built, so that Polo's omission to refer to either is fully accounted for. I pointed out also that not only one but several walls wore built before the time of the so-called "Builder of the Great Wall, the Emperor Ch'in Shib, and that he simply united and extruded those which the princes of some
Mr. M. W. Slade, barrister-at-law (instructed of the northern States had erected on their frontiers. by Mr. F. J. Grist, of Messrs. Wilkinson aud I showed, moreover, that Marco Polo must have Grist, solicitors), appeared for the paintiffs, crossed the line of the wall no less than four and the Hon. H. E. Pollock, K. C. (barrister- times, and that Col. Yale's solution of the diffi-at-law (instructed by Mr. G. K. H. Bratton, culty that the wall was in Polo's mind" whe
solicitor), represented the defendant. be referred to "the country not the rampart, be it noted] of Gog and Magog" was highly unsatisfactory, sinca, so far from this being a reason for omitting to allude to it, it would have been just the reverse! His want of success in finding a reason for the application of the name [to the country would not have caused him to withhold all notice of what would have been to him one of the most remarkable objects in the whole of his long journey." In fact, had the wall been there, he would have had staring him in the face the very proof of which he was in search.
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A copy of my paper, as well as of another which contained a solution of what I may call the
park" difficulty at Kananda, was sent at the time to Col. Yule, and it is, possible that M. Cordier has taken a hint from it in revising this paragraph of Yale's classic work.
In giving judgmont his Lordship said the plaintiffs and defendant were partners in Bismarck and Co., a firm carrying on business in Hongkong and Port Arthur. At the end of last year a fire occurred in the premises at Port Arthur and the insurance company or companies paid over $115,000. The plaintiffs were naturally interested in that eam, and as they knew nothing about the working of the Port Arthur business they made enquiries from defendant as to what had become of the money. Well. they got no satisfactory answer, and they could not get any accounts, and so some sort of friotion arose. Finally, it was arranged that the partnership should be dis solved on the promise that plaintiffs should carry on the Hongkous busino-s and that defendant should take the Port Arthur branch, Then the question arose us to how mnoh de- fendant should pay for the Port Arthur busi. ness. They could not come to terms, and a telegram was sent to the ageut at Port Arthur asking him to state the full value of the basi nss there. In due course a telegram returned. stating: "Landed property (brick-kil), capital $10,000, valued at 80 per cent.; ospital account for goods, $25,00), at 70 per cent.; damaged goods, $10,000, at 50 pзr cent, After setting off outstanding debts amount on current accounts $6,800. Total estimated amou it in Port Arthur and Dalny $37,000." On the face of that telegram the parties took it that that was the value of the property and further uegotiations were made upon it. It was arranged that th⚫ defendant should pay $25,000 for the Port Arthur property. Apparently some 816,00 was paid in cash, or some other way, and according to plaintiffs the balance was to be paid iu promissory notes. one of which was the subject of the action. That was the plain tiffs' story. Now, the defendant stated that he did not sign promissory notes; that be sigued documents to the effect that he would pay the Hop Shing Tong the exact amount of $1000, being capital for goods. He also said that there was a verbl condition that payment was not to be made until the accounts in the Port Arthur business had been inspected. The plaintiffs denied that, and he thought he might as well dispose of the point at once, and say that it was a most dangerous thing to import a verbal agreement into documentary matters It was distinctly agreed that the term should upon the unsupported evidence of one party be one month in which repayment should be made. The defendant denied that it was on the document that he sigued, and stated that it was put in afterwards. It was rather an in- vidious thing for a European to offer an opinion upon Chinese handwriting, but he had After examining the characters he was strongly of opinion that the alleged addi- Rather than the supposed greatness of the old tions were in the same handwriting as the other
1 refer to this here, not because it matters, when the truth is reached, whether he by whom it is reached is named Tom, Dick, or Harry, bat because I am convinced that your reviewer is perfectly right in defeuding Marco Polo (what a delightful travelling companion Messer Marco has been to many of us!) on this point. Had the Great Wall been anything like it is commonly supposed to be, and had it held any conspicuous place in native estimation, so care- ful and accurate au observer could not have failed to make mention of it-an object which has been ranked among the "seven wonders of the world." But it must be obvious to anyone who has examined the matter on the spot, that the prevailing idea of the Great Wall is founded on the long line which runs most maps from the Gulf of Liaotung to Chia-yü Kuan in Kanen, combined with ideas derived from visits to or photographs of the new, orinner, Great Wall (rightly so called; but built in the Ming dynasty, long after Polo's time). The idea of the structure is taken from the latter, and of its length from the former: hence a pseudo-idea not representing the trae state of the case,
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For those who have formed their impressions of the old wall from inspection of the structure itself, or what remains of it, and who have not deceived themselves by believing that it ever was es substantial
the ан
newar Ming wall, Marco's credit for carefulness and accuracy of observation requires no defence. As regards this old wall, I would even go further, end, relying on the evidence given in the paper above referred to, namely, that at a distance from the centre of government the ukase was probably laxiy enforced, and that squeeze" system was doubtless at least as rampant then as it is now, would state my belief to be that at least in many parts of the
the "
"1400
miles
its extent the Great Wall never oxisted at all,
to do it.
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The Hon. Mr. Pollock asked for stay of execution. The money was in Court and he wanted to consider the question of appeal.
His Lordship allowed a stay for a fortnight conditionally on all costs and interest being paid into Court,
The Court adjourned.
Monday, 21st September.
IN CRIMINAL JURISDICTION.
BEFORE HIS HONOUR SIR WILLIAM M. GOODMAN (CHIEF JUSTICE).
PEAK SHOOTING CASE,
Cart Vincenz, was indicted for shooting with intent to do grievous bodily harm and with unlawful wounding at Victoria Peak, on the 3rd inst. The Attorney-General (Hon Sir H. S. Berkeley), instructed by the Crown Solicitor, Mr. F. B. L. Bowley, prosecuted on behalf of the Crown, and Mr. M. W. Slale (instructed by Mr. H. W. Looker of Messrs. Deacon and Hastings) defended.
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Vincenz pleaded not guilty, and added wanded the man, I cannot deny that, but I did not intend to hurt him.
Mr. Slade: I think that is a plea of guilty on the second count.
The Attorney-General: Defendant clearly understands ?
Mr. Slade: Yes. As counsel for the de-
fenda t I alvised him to plead guilty to wounding.
His Lordship:--The ques'ion is whether the Attorney-General accepts that plea.
The Attorney-General:-Yes, I am prepared to accapt the plea of nalwful wounding. I do so because on the facts of the case I am unable to bring my own mind to believe that there was any intent on the part of defendant to do what he did. In committing an unlawful act when he had a revolver with him, even if it went off accidentally, he would have to stand the consequences of injuring through criminal negligence one of His Majesty's subjects. I am prepared to accept the ples of unlawful wounding.
His Lordship:-It was an unlawful act for him to have a revolver in his possession.
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Mr. Slade-Yes, my Lord. Continuing, Counsel said that defendant who had pleaded guilty to the charg of injuring a chair-coolie through having in his possession, unlawfully, a revolver which went off, had been for the past nine years, without a single break, in the interior of Sumatra tobacco-planting, where the life of a planter was a singularly hard
one. He had a very lonely time, was in a very unhealthy climate, and had beneath him numbers of Chinese excepting his own. He was a solitary European coolies, who were under no restraining hand amongst hundreds of ignorant Chinese coolies, the very dregs of China, and although the laws were as strict and as sternly enforced as in any British colony a man was bound to carry a revolver for his own proteo Riots among the coolies were of not infrequent occurrence, and never a year went by many European officers being badly beaten, wounded, and sometimes killed. “At the time
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