Note 393 — Chapter VI · THE PROTO-SIDERIC OR EARLY IRON AGE OF WEAPONS.

The ‘Celestial Empire,’ according to her annals, began b.c. 100,000–80,000; the date being probably astronomical, or rather astrological, founded, like the four Hindu æras, upon retrograde calculations. The first cycle of 60 years is attributed to the Emperor Hwang-tí, and its initiation to the 61st year of his reign, in b.c. 2637 (the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt?). The first historical dates are given in b.c. 651, a century after the foundation of Rome: these figures afford a curious contrast between pretensions and proof. But as Englishmen after long residence ‘grow black’ in Africa, and have become semi-Hinduised in India, so in China they have allowed themselves to be imposed upon by the ‘magna fabulositas,’ the marvellous self-sufficiency of astute semi-barbarians. ‘China is a sea that salts all the rivers which flow into it.’ Yet I am curious to ascertain by actual travel if China ever possessed a centre of civilisation independent of what she received from the West; in other words, non-Egyptian.