The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 3, 1897, Page 15

THE SAN JANUARY. 3, 1897, FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, Perhaps the nations about him boasted Of the wonderful things their rich soil grew, Among them a tuber, which boiled or roasted. Was fit for the Inca of old Peru. Then the sly old courtier, leaning, listening, His lips all moist and his keen eyes glistening, Determined his Irish estates should bear A harvest of this same tuber rare. \ .\\ j Jz < o Three hundred years of wine and laughter, Thre€ hundred years of dirge and moan : And strange seed sown to bloom thereafter, On fields where battle-storms have blown Three hundred years of building, vending, And love and war in a wild surge blending, Since a Briton bold sailed along Peru, Where a plant of imperial substance grew. Vit Since then the “Emerald” lands of Raleigh - === Have grown and grown till they class the world, 7 I : %’ And there’s never a fertile hill or valley , <) Unnoted there, the bold weed flourished, Where his plant’s biue pennant is not unfurled: The child of the land of tropic glory, Strange type of the New World’s matchless story, Has conquered the globe tor human good And belted it round with brotherhood. When Shakespeare dreamed midsummer dreams ¢ By that same mighty mother nourished, Who led the bard by Castalian streams, - Ere the stern-browed Pilgrim Fathers singing Hymns that are still ‘round old Plymouth ringing Made the landing, memorable so long As valor shall live, and Art and Seng. ~ ViiL Discard this treasure-trove from our tables And the sun would blanch with™a chill dismay, The staid old earth would snap her cables And wander the long-lost Pleiad’s'way: For the good gods ponder déep things duly And build for this race of ours’so truly f That affections twined for three hundred years Can only be wrecked in a sea of tears” Oft trampled it with heavy feet, And little dreamed some farto-morrow Would find its homely odor sweet ; For the gorgeous Incas never knew it, @nly the winds and waves sang to it, And some gold-helmed star would watch by night To shield it from misfortune’s blight. . When the young Sir Walter, perfumed, knightly, The embyroidered cloak from his.shoulders’ drew .. -4 And then with a gfaceful obeisance, lightly 7 The garment before his young Queen threw. He was playing the courtier, rl\obly. s;:rely. The gallant and couttly, simply, purely . Bugtathe hand that saved fair “Bess” from mud, ! Was the same that brought the conquering™ nae 4 ? 5 i s -~ 77 ” : : . /1/7 7, ©n the rocky fim of the New World growing, / 7% To botanic sclence all unknown, < % While the river of years was onward flowing, ) ;Z‘ It endured through all its vigil lone ; 22 Still lifting its crinkled liftle flower / Of tenderest blue to sun and shower, While the birds, in tropic splendor drest, Sang the woods awake and the days to rest.. ; gl - i Ne) (A n(/"”} flf: PRt g beode R I3[y I An English admiral, plumed and braidea, . 3 | l J Iy \l\q. b gilded pirate, lon winds say. . Honor to him and to buccaneering, " Yl 3o i i i : That must a divine commission hold, [ 1 I/ ' By favoring breezes blithely aided, . ; ! : £ Al iti == When a Raleigh, down a wild coast steering, 7 i /[ ; Came sailing along the coast one aay, = e o GE - Afd in one of his inland tramps for plunder, Can give to Al w¥ : \“fi’r A business achieved some free chart under, Honor to him.an ! e Rt £ w11/, Discovered the wild, hard-favored waif To the royal southron so g fd A\l By a fragrant gum tree sheltered safe b That the wild Peruvian long has passed HJ A il A I " "'” i il ] ‘{1 M”I Into a “murphy” hard and fast L ok 400 }.l d J"M il 1’?1””1“‘ Ll Wi FE T S e - [+] TRANSLATING THE HISTORY OF THE CHINESE EMPIRE Herculean Undertaking That Will Rank as One of the Famous Works of the Most Enlightened Gentury of the World A San Franciscan’s John ed the Snglish of the Chinese en a clergyman, han a boy. Since ation of the energ; to undertake this has assiduously out half through \ more task. is the first ac what will first gla astonishing enterpri; to make his own enterprises are conside Gardner has accompl these growing out of the al design, public w n, for the official hi ck tc & period betwe before the birth of e ntinued onward to ihe present So Mr. Gardner has essayed o re- »duce chronicles written in the Chinese e in their entirety, covering a d of approximately 6000 years in count published of e appear to be an for any one person the collateral which Mr. i by the way, When derment is y of China 3000 and v, as a sort of parallel, the dustry of Buckle, the £ng- who essayed to give toman- ry of civiiization, arises. Itis ey wereextensive. He studied ed many languages and so found his facts in the words of those by whom they had originally been recorded. He delved obscure passages and brought luc out of obscurity. The scope of his dertaking will probably remain unique and unparalleled, strictly speaking. But there is no doubt that Mr. dner’s exploi lalso be famous for many years wherever there are philolo- gistsand scholars. Itis possible that bis labors will be more arduous than were Buckle’s. The imperial history of China has never been translated. Historians and political economists of all nations, considering the mazvel of the continuance of China as an entity century after century dunng the time when Rome and Greece and other nations ripened and decayed, have never had more than a very small part of the history of that great portion of the worid in their possession. The great official wark consists of thirty volumes, the whole aggrezating at least 10,000 pages, closely strewn with Chinese characters, from 450 to 500 to the page. At the out- set, therefore, Mr. Gardner faced the cer- ty that he would have at least 1,000,000 acters 1o translate. As three Chinese characters need, on the average, five words to give them expression in the English language, the number of words which will be in the history when it is completed in English will be nearer 2,000,000 words than * 1,060,000, some time, for it was necessary to first find k of the | ursuit of his | e researches of Buckle were as | I Mr. Gardner is doing the work practi- cally unaided. Like all men who under- | the characters and then to transcribe take soch exploits, or neariy all, he is|them upon tne chart. This I have been poor, depending sometimes on a sma!l | compelled to do all myself, with the ex- ception of & short time when an educated Chinese assisted me. The discoveries were a revelation to him. “The next step was to go into an anal- | salary us an_ interpreter and apon on his | salary as a Chinese missionary for his | | subsistence and that of his family. Before | he can complete the history, if he makes no more rapid progress than he has been | enabled to record up to the present time | [ atleast ten years more will pass. That is, he will have toiled nearly or fully a| | quarter of a century to place in the hands | of succeeding historians every fact known | to the Chinese about themselves, ard also | the gigantic myths with which a highly | imaginative nation peopled their werld and accounted for the existence of the earth and the remainder of the universe. | The collateral enterprises alluded to in the foregoing may be briefly described. “I first read' the entirehustory through,” said Mr. Gardner yesterday. “‘That took about two years, occupying all the time that I could devote to it. Having done this I began the work of translation. | There are shades of thought expressed by | the Chinese langnage which are practi- | cally impossible to render into oglish except by the useof paraphrases. The necessary study over the rendering of passages with subtle meaning necessarily has made my progress slow. “Incidentally, I may say, I have made a | comparison of word-forms, studying the evolution of the Chinese ianguage, consid- ering its structure and then selecting all distinctive characters from existing can- onical works, as well as from the transla- tions of the Scriptures into Chinese. All of these charactérs I have spelled out in English, according to the exact pronun- ciation of them in Chinese. There are 11,071 characters that I have romanized or spelled out in English and I bave num- bered and explained every one of them. They are put into English according to Cantonese. So far as I know this list of Chinese spelled out in English on the basis of the Cantonese is the only one in | the world, “If there is another list of that sort I would like to find it for the sake of com- parisons. Dr. Eitel's Cantonese diction- ary falls short of my list by 1000 to 2000 characters. The explanation of this part of the work is that my stepfather, Rev. Daniel Vrooman, who was Consul of the United States at Canton, with two or three learned Chinese literary men assist- ling him, projected a massive Chinese dic- tionary of thirty-five volumes. He had all the phrases collected which needed to be translated into Cantonese. He left the work for me to complete. “J have prepared a chait of Chinese characvers, which have been spelled out by me in Enelish according to the root characters. On one chart the 11,071 char- iclers already mentioned may all be seen avone view. Of course, that labor took ysis of Chinese characters, dissecting care- fully every component part of characters. Each character is one word, Through this analysis and through trying to get bold of the elements of words, and neces- sarily becoming familiar with them, I have' . discovered the true system on . which the language is based, which is to me entranc- ing, and it will be a fascinating study to all Eng!ish-speaking students of the Chi- nese language. “For convenience auother chart has been made by me, the size of which is eighteen inches square. Upon this are all the phonetics or !primitives of the lan- guage unon which the whole structure is based. They rumber 1407 if ‘I recollect aright. The Chirese characters were fi pictorial. The phonetics are pictorials used in a phonetic way. By combining I these new characters have been formed. The pictorials were hieroglyphics in the early days of the history of China, the first step in written language, and the sentence as I have made it up. The Chi- B. C., studied Chinese poets who were Rev. Mr. Gardner seemed to think that there was very little to be surprised at in nese understood very well what was said.”’ characters as formerly written resemble the objects which they were designed to deseribe. Incidentally, also, 1 have gone through every character used in the two these amazing incidental labors. He spoke very simply and modestly of the whole work. Enough curiosity must have been excited concerninga unique personality by this time to make some description in order. In the first place it may be said that Mr. Gardner's mother is a full-blooded Chinese woman. She has been enraged many years in the labor of christianizing Chinese. His father was an American. Rev. Mr. Gardner was born in Canton, China, and lived there until he was 17 years old. He then went to Australia and lived there three years. Then he came to San Francisco, and he has resided on the Pacific Coast of the United States thirteen years. He first became publicly known in San Franciscc as an interpreter of Chinese in the Custom-house and the Federal courts, where his ability and greal proficiency as a Chinese scholar speedily distinguished him. From San Francisco he went to Victoria, B. C., and became official interpreter of Chinese for the Canadian Govirnment. He remained there until the office was abolished, find- ing time while he was interpreting fora salary toserve gratuitously as a Chris- tian missionary among the Chinese. Then he held the position of superintend- ent of the Chine e M. E. churches and missions in British Columbia. During this period he was continuously 1n correspondence with philologists of re- pute. E. P. Vining, who wrote a history of **An Inglorious Columbus,” the Chi- nese discoverer of America, frankly ac- knowledged his debt to Mr. Garaner for valuable assistance. But Mr. Gardner has gone along quietly, his work to whicn he is devoting so much of bis life being un- known to the public. Personally he is modest und unsssuming, even shrinking in speaking of himself. He said that he is more enthusiastic now than when ve began, and that be does not dread the years of toil necessary to complete his task. “My purpose in the main,” he said, *is to put into Emglish an exact reflex of the history of 350,000,000 people from the standard history of the great empire. The measures adopted by the ancient founders of Chinese laws and customs and scheme of government may have | lessons for the present if they can be ascertained. In the main I am translat- ing the Chinese imperial history, bat am finding sidelights in many other Chinese manuscripts. The ancient history of the Chinese people extends back to between 3000 and 4000 years before Christ. Prior to that is a period of Chinese mythology. The antiquity of the Chinese may b» im- agined from the fact that Confucius, 550 Chinese versions of the Scriptures and have spelled out in English every charac- ter that is difficult to pronounce. To make sure that these pronunciations were cor- rect I have had persons who do not know one word of the Chinese language read a then considered very ancient. *“The earth, sothe Chinese mythology held, was chiseled out by Poon Koo, the architect of the universe, with a great chisel. That myihology does not pretend to account for the presence of mankind on the earth. Ifind that authentic history does not begin with the Chinese much be- fore 2500 to 3000 years B. C. The exist- ence of coins, monuments, inscribed vases and contemporaneous books is sufficient corroboration for the events recorded from that time onward in the officia! history. China was a very old nation when other great peoples were coming into national existence. “Chinese history falls naturally into pe« riods and in that way I skall treat it. In the first place there were the beginnings of government. I could not say how many parallels are found, in that early day, between the experiences of the Chie nese and those of the early Jewish people. They are many and striking. The early Chinese had kings who ruled them by kindness and who seemed to think that thrones were given by the Supreme Being. The people at first all believed in one God. They were monotheists. If they after- ward learned idolatry it was from the out- siders, particularly from India. “Tne medieval period shows the origin of literature and the visitation of Chi. nese to other countries and the visits re- ceived by them from joreigners. There is no question that the history is absolutely authentic for 4500 years. Many centuries ago Chinese astronomers gave a minute and scientific account of the eclipse of the sun, which has been completely veri- fied by the computations of American and European astronomers. The Chinese de- vised the civil-service system centuries ago. ‘:‘Think," said Mr. Gardner, “what a theater has been here for the play of ha- man hopes, fears, passions and exploita- tions for thousands of years, all of which can be opened for contemplation. China has been as much an embattled country through the centuries as European lands, Once China was divided into seven war- ring states, every one fighting all its neighbors. There have been rogal plots, royal assassinations, gigantic wars, every- thing cn a grand scale. So to speak, the history of a European country hes been made up of the annals of a corner of the globe as compared with this ‘great land and hoary old nation that has outlived so many natieff5 and may outlive many more great peoples.” Mr. Gardner will not publish any part of his history until he has coripleted it, which may be possibly fitteen years hence. When his book of millions of words finally is finished it will be as large asa small modern library. Mr. Gardner is under 33 years of age.