Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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The fruits of the earth are abundant at Shanghai, and “Jack ashore” may revel in delicious peaches, figs, persimmons, cherries, plums, oranges, citrons, and pomegranates, while there is a plentiful supply of fish, flesh, and fowl. Grains of all kinds, rice, and cotton are cultivated extensively; the latter gives employment at the loom for thousands. On the other hand there are drawbacks in the shape of clouds of musquitoes, flying-beetles, heavy rains, monsoons, and earthquakes. The prognostics of the latter are a highly electric state of the atmosphere, long drought, excessive heat, and what can only be described as a stagnation of all nature. Dr. Milne, reciting his experiences, says: “At the critical moment of the commotion, the earth began to rock, the beams and walls cracked like the timbers of a ship under sail, and a nausea came over one, a sea-sickness really horrible. At times, for a second or two previous to the vibration, there was heard a subterraneous growl, a noise as of a mighty rushing wind whirling about under ground.” The natives were terror-struck, more especially if the quake happened at night, and there would burst a mass of confused sounds, “Kew ming! Kew ming!” (“Save your lives! save your lives!”) Dogs added their yells to the medley, amid the striking of gongs and tomtoms. Next day there would be exhaustless gossip concerning upheaval and sinking of land, flames issuing from the hill-sides, and ashes cast about the country. The Chinese ideas on the subject are various. Some thought the earth had become too hot, and that it had to relieve itself by a shake, or that it was changing its place for another part of the universe. Others said that the Supreme One, to bring transgressors to their senses, thought to alarm them by a quivering of the earth. The notion most common among the lower classes is, that there are six huge sea-monsters, great fish, which support the earth, and that if any one of these move, the earth must be agitated. Superstition is rife in ascribing these earth-shakings chiefly to the remissness of the priesthood. In almost every temple there is a muh-yu—an image of a scaly wooden fish, suspended near the altar, and among the duties of the priests, it is rigidly prescribed that they keep up an everlasting tapping on it. If they become lax in their duties, the fish wriggle and shake the earth to bring the drowsy priests to a sense of their duty.