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VII. ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY. [0|
were independent and constantly intrigued and fought to
' obtain each other's territory. For this amongst other
reasons no map can be anything but approximate, for the
boundaries of the States were constantly changing.
The population was small and widely scattered, for
instance, the three chief towns of Wei, after an incursion of
the wild tribes in tile 7th century B. C., only numbeled a
total of 5o00 soulq, (Legge, Ch'un Ch'iu Intro. p. I27),
and it is estimated that the whole Empire in the days
of Confucius numbered but some thirteen miltions of
people.
Barter was the medium of commerce, pieces cf cloth
being the principal standard of exchange. The language
was more or less homogeneous, and was evidently
stronger in the possession of fiual gutturals, labials, and
dentals than is the case with modern northern Chinese,
which has probably suffered from the dominating influence
of its Northern invaders, possibly from the tribes that were
absolbed, and most of all from the eroding influences of
time. Both in dress, language and manners the early
Chinese differed totally from their 'indigenous' neighbours.
Furs, silk, linen, and perhaps woollen or felt
formed the principal articles of clothing. In their do-
mestic arrangements, houses built of brick, or of clay
rammed hard, and with tiled roofs were in existence, but
chairs had not yet been invented, and the people sat low
down on mats as do the'Japanese to this day. Books
were cumbrous, being made from slips of bamboo, and
the art of mapping had not yet been discovered, at least
no map 1_ come down to our days.