712
ASIA
thus from the earliest historical times there has not only existed a right-of-way to traders across the entire continent of Asia, but we can faintly trace the dawn of a sea-borne traffic in the records of Egyptian fleets in the Red Sea and of Chinese junks east of Ceylon. The great development of Asiatic trade has, however, been in hands that are neither Egyptian nor Mongolian, but which belonged to Semitic races—Jews, Phoenicians, or Sabsean Arabs ; and clear history only begins with those early days when Arabs were masters of the Eastern seas, with settlements on the coast of India, in Ceylon, in the Straits, and China, as well as on the shores of Eastern Africa—if indeed they were not planted in the interior of that continent. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, had each secured the right of trade to Eastern Asia in turn, and each in turn had lost it when Rome appeared in the field, and for seven centuries (from 1st century b.c. to the 6th a.d.) held more or less complete command of the regions intervening between Eastern Asia and the Mediterranean. But Egyptians were busy with their ships whilst Rome held command on land. The Arabs gradually superseded the Egyptians on the high seas, and ere the days of Islam had already established themselves as the greatest nation of traders that the world had ever seen. The conquest of Sind (in the 8th century a.d.) led to the establishment .an pOU f of a land route through Makran, north of the Arabian S,a ea to le Ini us to'lndia. ®of Chabar, ’ ^ wasi thevalley. portvoyage of Tiz,eastwards in the bay terminusThe of the of the Arab merchantmen, and from Tiz through Kiz, or Kej, to Bela and the Indus valley the journey was performed on land. From the far east the clumsy Chinese junk met the buggalow of the Arab at Ceylon. Here cargoes were exchanged, and thus for centuries the trade between East and West was maintained by sea till the Cape route was discovered by a Portuguese explorer and the whole traffic of the East diverted into new channels. From routes of Prellistoric <lays the land routes of Asia have remained Asia. much samegeographical through the easternofparts of thealmost continent.theThe position Kashgar, on the same parallel of latitude as Peking, with nearly 2000 miles of low-lying desert and steppe intervening, and forming a long narrow area of depression between the Tibetan plateau and the Tian-Shan mountains, a depression which, so far as we know, between Kashgar and the Upper Amur never rises above 2000 feet above sea-level and may sink to less than 500, renders it an almost obligatory point in any line of trade connecting China and the Caspian. All recent travellers have confirmed its importance, and we find several routes from the east gathering themselves at Kashgar before diverging again westwards. Only one route of any importance passes to the north of Kashgar, i.e., that which, following the modern track between Peking and Hami, strikes off from the latter place to Urumtsi and Kulja, instead of passing through Aksu, south of the Tian-Shan, to Kashgar. Another route which was much used by the silk traders from Central China passes through Sining-fu (east of Koko Nor), and skirts the northern foot of the Altyn Tagh and the southern edge of the Tarim desert. From Kashgar westwards over the elevated region of the Pamirs the most direct route follows the Kashgar river to its source, and, crossing the great continental water-divide by the passes which lead into the Altai valley, makes its way by the fertile banks of the Surkhab to the Oxus. But from the southern towns of Chinese Turkestan, which group themselves along the foot of the Kuen Lun and once spread into the plains of Lob Nor and the Takla Makan desert, the road to the Oxus lay through Tashkurghan (the “stone tower ” of mediaeval geography) and by the passes of the Sarikol to the great Pamirs and Lake Victoria. There can be little doubt that this was a much-traversed Khafila route during the middle centuries of our era. From Lake Victoria it passes to Ishkashim and across Badakshan to Afghan Turkestan and Herat or Mashad. The route from India vid Kandahar, Kirman, and Babylon was well enough known in Alexander’s time, but it is only lately that the facilities^ of it have been fully demonstrated. In later years trade found its way from the Indus valley to the Oxus vid Kabul and Balkh, and thence passed north of the Caspian into Russia or wv Tiflis to the Black Sea and Constantinople. When^-Tabriz the Arabsand prevailed in Asia, and Baghdad became the capital of the Caliphs, the Euphrates valley and Svria again were filled with Eastern merchandise. Then the Saracen gave place to the Crusader, and the command of the greatest trade routes of Asia was m the hands of Christians. In 1258 Baghdad fell before the Mogul, and by the commencement of the 15th century Turks and' Mongols had blocked the'Syrian outlet. For 200 years previously Venetians ana Genoese had developed the overland trade between India and Europe vid the Black Sea, and rendered themselves supreme in the Mediterranean. Venetian influence may still be traced along the coast districts of Persia and Makran to Western India. In Makran Venetian gold coins were till quite recently recognized as the only gold currency. It was the barrier set by the Mogul that started the Portuguese quest for a new sea route, and thus was initiated that line of sea traffic round the Cape of Good Hope which revolutionized the
whole system of Eastern trade. Now, once again has the Red Sea resumed its pre-eminence in the commercial geography of the world. The ships of Tarshish are replaced by the modern ocean liners. But no developments corresponding in space Sea have distinguished the methods of land transport. routes. For a vast part of Asia the slow-moving camel is still the mainstay of the merchant traveller; and there is as yet no land connexion between Europe and Eastern Asia that will compete with the facilitated sea route. But we are within a measurable distance of ■witnessing such an overland connexion, and we are meanwhile already in possession of such perfected systems of local communication in India as render her railway developments of the last quarter of the 19th century distinguished in the annals of the world’s progress. The first great continental line of railway which will bring Western Europe into touch with Eastern Asia will be that of Siberia. The Russian system connects St. Petersburg Russiaa with the Asiatic frontier by a line which is rather railwa more than 1700 miles in length, passing through ysMoscow. From the Asiatic frontier eastwards, the Western Siberia line now extends to beyond the 90th meridian of east longitude, linking up with the Central Siberian line, which will touch Lake Baikal at Irkutsk. So far the traffic returns have shown a steady increase as the various sections of the line have been opened, and so great an expanse of trade is anticipated that the line is now being adapted for the service of at least eight pairs of trains, instead ot the three for which the original calculations were framed. From Irkutsk eastwards the trails-Baikal and Manchurian sections of this great continental line will extend to a junction with the Usuri railway of the Amur river basin, of which the terminal^ port is at Vladivostok, on the Pacific coast. A part of the Usuri line is already complete. It was initiated by the present emperor on the 19th May 1891. The Baltic and Pacific will thus be connected by a line which will be little short of 6000 miles in length, covering nearly a quarter of the circumference of the globe. A remarkable feature in this enterprise is that the railway traverses those vast steppes and wide uplands which have historically been regarded as the waste lands of Asia, passing far to the north of the teeming districts whose wealth has been the desire of the nations from time immemorial. Undoubtedly it will eventually be connected with Central China and Peking, but at present the tardily recognized resources of Siberia alone are held amply to justify the construction of this magnificent line. Farther south, the ports of the Caspian have been connected by rail with the Central Asian Khanates by a line which passes along the foot of the northern slopes of the Persian Elburz to Merv, Bokhara, and Samarkand. Here, again, the advent of the railway is marked by enormous commercial developments, and the province of Ferghana already reproduces the smiling landscapes of Central Asia ere the days of Mogul devastation. Whilst Russia has been so busy, India (strictly within the limits of her own borders) has effected even more in actual length of railway extension. An extent of line which would /n an nearly circle the globe (about 23,000 miles) represented f/ the railway traffic capabilities of India at the close railways. of the 19th century, and of this amount three-fourths at least have been brought into existence since 1875. The record of the many schemes which have resulted in so great an accession of trade arteries belongs to the annals of India. They can hardly be called continental, for as yet no definite proposal has taken practical shape which will end in linking India with Europe. Between India and China there is indeed a prospect of the evolution of a practical scheme of connexion. The extension of Burmese railways northwards to Mogaung, in the Upper Irrawaddy basin, and north-eastwards from Mandalay to the Kunlon ferry on the Salween, points the way to further extensions which will unite Dibrugarh* in Upper Assam, with Mogaung, and the Kunlon ferry with Talifu’ in the Chinese province of Yun-nan. But at present, with all the wealth of interior railway development which has distinguished the close of the century, both within the peninsula of India and in Burma, the two still remain unconnected and, in a measure, isolated from the rest of the world. China.—In China we find perhaps the most noteworthy record of Asiatic national evolution that the history of the 19th century can show. It is not a long record, but it is a most surprising one. The old order has changed ; the con- Chinese servatism of her political principles is disappearing ; railways. the bulwark of national antipathy to foreign innovations has been broken through, and the sacred seclusion that hedged about the Impeml Court has been invaded. The birth of a new century will herald the birth of a new era for China—an era of railways and company projectors, and mining developments ; the scattering of empire ; the burial of prehistoric isolation and dignity. The record of China’s late achievements in material progress so far is not a long one, but its promise is great, for it is a practical indication that the hostility of China to the introduction of railways has at last disappeared. The first railway from Shanghai to
