But there has been another reason why Shanghai has prospered beyond all the other British ports of China. All our ports except Shanghai are separated from the inland waters of China by a chain of mountains. Inside those mountains lies the vast bulk of the empire of China, outside lie our trading ports. Again, the Yang-tse-kiang, which flows out just at Shanghai, affords an easy route by which the goods consigned to that port may reach the interior of the country, and the system of innumerable canals which intersect it.

They have centuries of premodern experience in coping with being overwhelmed in multiple ways—not only by God, but also by other overwhelmings that have always been part of the human condition, such as disease, famine, war […]

On most of the shores of the ancient Mediterranean, before any historical record, the cultivated grape vine, Vitis vinifera Linn., was grown. Its relationship to the wild vine of Eurasia, Vitis silvestris Gmel., is uncertain. Its pips can mostly be distinguished from those of the wild vine, and have been found in Egypt and Syrian Hama from the fourth millennium BC, at Lachish and Jericho in the early Bronze, at Troy II during the Bronze, in the Peloponnesus from Early Helladic, in Crete from the Early Minoan.

it cometh short of their compactness and durity; and, therefore, requireth not the emery, as the saphire, granite, and topaz, but will receive impression from steel, in a manner like the turquoise.