ment of this dynasty a corps of two hundred and twenty officers ! Ma-touan-lin used many early topographical works in preparing his great Cyclopaedia. 1 Minute descriptions of the different provinces have been revised and rewritten, some of them from ten to fifteen times. From the fourth century to the present time, all Asia to the borders of Persia has been under the patient and steady pencils of Chinese geography. 2 The " Complete Survey of the Em- pire," in one hundred and eight volumes, printed in 1744, covers boundaries, climate, history, natural phenomena ; manners and customs, towns, edifices, canals, schools, -and libraries ; area, population, official list ; mountains and rivers, antiquities, castles, passes, bridges, dams, monu- ments, temples ; distinguished persons, religious and offi- cial ; and productions of the soil, for every province and every dependency. In accumulating these materials, Chi- nese, Mongols, and Manchus have been equally diligent, and the researches of scientific commissions have gone hand in hand with military and commercial expeditions, down to the present day. Of the accuracy of the earlier geographies there is reason to doubt ; the first clear ideas of the form of the earth and the measurement of its sur- face being given by the Jesuits, whose survey of China, in 1707-1717, is still in high repute. Wylie, however, regards the testimony of Chinese books about China as in general unimpeachable, and even in their reference to for- eign countries as not more given to fable than our West- ern literature on kindred topics. 3 They certainly bear very favorable comparison with the old Greek and Roman ge- ographers, who wrote of the far East ; with Ptolemy and Strabo and Ctesias and Pliny ; with all map-makers and travellers during the Middle Ages, and even down to recent times. 4 1 Schott, p. 80. 2 Ritter on Asia, in Knight's Store of KnowL, p. 172. 8 Wylie, p. 54. 4 Behaim's Maj> (Niirnberg, 1492), placed Zipangu a short distance west of the Cape Verd Isles ; in later maps it was just beyond Cuba.
