. William H. Seward's travels around the world. ctly cultivated. At midnight we fastened at the wharf of Ching-Kiang, thesouthern terminus of the Imperial Canal. This populous andimportant town was nearly destroyed during the Ta-ping rebel-lion. The mercury had gone down to twenty-eight degrees. Aheavy dew was falling. It was no time to go ashore. Our captain THE CITY OF NANKING. 211 left on the wharf three thousand boxes and bales of merchandise,consisting of sugars from Southern China, and British manufac-tured goods and opium from India—a large freight, consideringthat the steamer is one of
. William H. Seward's travels around the world. ctly cultivated. At midnight we fastened at the wharf of Ching-Kiang, thesouthern terminus of the Imperial Canal. This populous andimportant town was nearly destroyed during the Ta-ping rebel-lion. The mercury had gone down to twenty-eight degrees. Aheavy dew was falling. It was no time to go ashore. Our captain THE CITY OF NANKING. 211 left on the wharf three thousand boxes and bales of merchandise,consisting of sugars from Southern China, and British manufac-tured goods and opium from India—a large freight, consideringthat the steamer is one of a daily line, and that the river is atevery point crowded with junks. It looks quite like home to seethe numerous and immense timber-rafts floating down from nativeforests in Thibet. What product does China need to make herself self-sustaining %The banks above Ching-Kiang rise to a height of one thousandfeet. Nanking, on the south side of the river, is in an amphitheatreformed by those hills. This city has historical interest as the capital. BRIDGE AT NANKING, AND PORCELAIN TOWER BEFORE ITS DESTRUCTION. of the empire before the conquest of Kublai-Khan ; afterward itwas occasionally the residence of the Ming emperors. Nankingbecame famous, still later, as a commercial centre, and remained so 212 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA. until the period of steam-navigation. Last of all, it became mem-orable as the vantage-ground from which the Ta-ping insurgentscarried the civil war to the walls of Peking. The pagoda calledthe Porcelain Tower, which, with its nine successive roofs of seexii-ing emerald, and the golden apple on its summit, at that timelooked upon Nanking, was justly admired, not only as a chief em-bellishment of the great city, but as one of the wonders of theworld. But all this glory has passed away. The Ta-ping rebel-lion, which ended only in 1864, proved destructive to Nanking. It seems almost enough to excuse the dread which all nationsfeel for civil war, when we co
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