Record in Dark Blood_. This work
contains notices of eminent statesmen and others, who met violent
deaths, each accompanied by a telling illustration of the tragic scene.
Some of the incidents go far to dispose of the belief that patriotism is
quite unknown to the Chinese.

* * * * *

Division C is devoted to Geography and to Topography. Here stands the
Imperial Geography of the Empire, in twenty-four large volumes, with
maps, in the edition of 1745. Here, too, stand many of the Topographies
for which China is justly celebrated. Every Prefecture and every
District, or Department,--and the latter number about fifteen
hundred,--has its Topography, a kind of local history, with all the
noticeable features of the District, its bridges, temples, and like
buildings, duly described, together with biographies of all natives of
the District who have risen to distinction in any way. Each Topography
would occupy about two feet of shelf; consequently a complete collection
of all the Topographies of China, piled one upon the other, would form a
vertical column as high as the Eiffel Tower. Yet Topography is only an
outlying branch of Chinese literature.

Division C further contains the oldest printed book in the Cambridge
University Library, and a very interesting one to boot. It is entitled
_An Account of Strange Nations_, and was published between 1368 and
1398. Its contents consist of short notices of about 150 nationalities
known more or less to the Chinese, and the value of these is much
enhanced by the woodcuts which accompany each notice.

Among the rest we find Koreans, Japanese, Hsiung-nu (the forefathers of
the Huns), Kitan Tartars, tribes of Central Asia, Arabs, Persians, and
even Portuguese, Jean de Montecorvino, who had been appointed archbishop
of Peking in 1308, having died there in 1330. Of course there are a few
pictures of legendary peoples, such as the Long-armed Nation, the
One-eyed Nation, the Dog-headed Nation, the Anthropophagi,

"and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

There is also an account of Fusang, the country where grew the famous
plant which some have tried to identify with the Mexican aloe, thus
securing the discovery of America for the Chinese.

The existence of many of these nations is duly recorded by Pliny in his
_Natural History_, in words curiously identical with those we find in
the Chinese records.

Some strange birds and