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Character of the early colonizing Chinese satraps--Revolt of the western satrap and flight of the Emperor in 842 B.C.--Daughter of a later satrap marries the Emperor--Tartars mix up with questions of imperial succession and kill the Emperor--Transfer of the imperial metropolis from Shen Si to Ho Nan--The Chou dynasty, dating from 1122 B.C.--Before its conquest, the vassal house of Chou occupied the same relation to the imperial dynasty of Shang that the Wardens of the Western Marches, or Princes of Ts'in, did in turn to the imperial dynasty of Chou--The Shang dynasty had in 1766 B.C., for like reasons, supplanted the Hia dynasty-No events of great interest recorded in limited area of China before 771 B.C.--Decline of the imperial power until its extinction in 250 B.C.--The Five Tyrant or Protector period--Natural movement to keep pace with political development--Easier system of writing-- Development of trade and industry--Living interests clash with extinct aspirations--From 722 B.C. to 480 B.C. is the period of change covered by Confucius' history

The collapse of the Emperor led to restlessness in the south too-- The Jungle country south of the River Han--Ancient origin of its kings--Claim to equality--Buffer state to the south--Ruling caste consisted of educated Chinese--Extension of the Ts'u empire-- Annamese connections--Claims repeated 704 B.C.--Capital moved to King-thou Fu near Sha-sh?--First Ts'u conquests of China--Five hundred years of struggle with Ts'in for the possession of all China

How far is history true?--Confucius and eclipses--Evidence notwithstanding the destruction of literature in 213 B.C.-- Retrospective calculations of eclipses and complications of calendars--Eclipse of 776 B.C.--Errors in Confucian history owing to rival calendars

Paraphernalia of warfare--Ten thousand and one thousand chariot states--Use of war-chariots, leather or wood--Chariots allotted according to rank--Seventy-five men to one cart--War-chariots date back to 1800 B.C.--Tartar house-carts--Rivers mostly unnavigable in north--Introduction of canals and boat traffic--Population and armies--Vague descriptions--Early armies never exceeded 75,000 men--The use of flags--Used in hunting as well as in war--Victims sacrificed to drums--A modern instance of this in 1900 A.D.

The first Hegemon or Protector of China and his own vassal kingdom of Ts'i--Limits of Ts'i and ancient course of the Yellow River-- Absence of ancient records--Shiftings of capital in the ninth century B.C.--Emperor's collapse of 842 and its effect upon Ts'i-- Aid rendered by Ts'i in suppressing the Tartars--Inconsiderable size of Ts'i--Revenges a judicial murder two centuries old--Rapid rise of Ts'i and services of the statesman--philosopher Kwan-tsz-- The governing caste in China--Declares self Protector of China 679 B.C.--Tartar raids down to the Yellow River in Ho Nan-Chinese durbars and the duties of a Protector--Ts'in and Ts'u too far off or too busy for orthodox durbars--Little is now known of the puppet Emperor's dominions--Effeminate character of all the Central Chinese orthodox stales--Fighting instincts all with semi- Chinese states--Struggle for life becoming keener throughout China

Sanctity of envoys--Rivalry of Tsin north and Ts'u south for influence over orthodox centre--The state of CH?NG --The state of Sung --Family sacrifices-- Instances of envoy treatment--The philosopher Yen-tsz: his irony-- The statesman Tsz-ch'an of CH?NG--Ts'u's barbarous and callous conduct to envoys--Greed for valuables among high officers-- squabble for precedence at Peace Conference--Confucius manipulates history--Yen-& and Confucius together at attempted assassination

Death of First Protector and his henchman Kwan-tsz, 648-643 B.C.-- Ts'i succession and Sung's claim to Protectorate--Tartar influence in Ts'i--Ts'u's claim to the hegemony--Ridiculous orthodox chivalry--Great development of Tsin--A much-married ruler-- Marriage complications--Interesting story of the political wanderings of the Second Protector--Tries to replace Kwan-tsz deceased--Pleasures of Ts'i life--Mean behaviour of orthodox princes to the Wanderer--Frank attitude of Ts'u--Successive Tartar-born rulers of Tsin, and war with T&n--Second Protector gains his own Tsin throne--Puppet Emperor at a durbar--Tsin obtains cession of territory--Triangular war between the Powers-- Description of the political situation--China 2500 years ago beginning to move as she is now doing again

I'Jo religion except natural religion--Religion not separate from administrative ritual--The titles of "King" and "Emperor"--Prayer common, but most other of our own religious notions absent--Local religion in barbarous states--Distinction between loss and annihilation of power--Ducal rank and marquesses--Distinction between grantee sacrifices and personal sacrifices--Prayer and the ancient Emperor Shun, whose grave is in Hu Nan--Chou Emperor's sickness and brother's written prayer--Offers to sacrifice self-- Messages from the dead--Lao-tsz's book--Ts'in and conquered Tsin Sacrifices--Further instances of prayer

Ancestral tablets carried in war-Shrines graduated according to rank--Description of shrines--Specific case of the King of Ts'u-- Instance of the First August Emperor much later--Temple of Heaven, Peking, and the British occupation of it--Modern Japanese instance of reporting to Heaven and ancestors--Tsin and Ts'i instances of it--Sacrificial tablets--Writing materials--Lu's special spiritual status--Desecration of tombs and flogging of corpses--Destruction of ancestral temples--Imperial presents of sacrificial meat-- Fasting and purification--Intricate mourning rules. So-65

History of Tsin and the Bamboo Annals discovered after 600 years' burial--Confirmatory of Confucius' history--Obsolete and modern script--Ancient calendars--Their evidence in rendering dates precise--The Ts'in calendar imposed on China--Rise of the Ts'in power--Position as Protector--Vast Tartar annexations by Ts'in-- Duke Muh of Ts'in and Emperor Muh of China--Posthumous names-- Discovery of ancient books--Supposed travels of Emperor Muh to Tartary--Possibility of the Duke Muh having made the journeys-- Ts'in and Tsin force Tartars to migrate--Surreptitious vassal "emperors"--Instances of Annam and Japan--Tsin against Ts'in and Ts'u after Second Protector's death--Ts'i never again Protector-- Ts'in's Chinese and Tartar advisers--Foundations for Ts'in's future empire.

The Five Protectors of China more exactly defined--No such period as the "Five Tyrant period" can be logically accepted as accurate-- Chinese never understand the principles of history as distinct from the detailed facts--International situation defined--Flank movements--Appearance of barbarous Wu in the Chinese arena-- Phonetic barbarian names--The State of Wei--Enlightened prince envoy to China from Wu--Wu rapidly acquires the status of Protector--Confucius tampers with history--Risky position of the King of Wu--Y?eh conquers Wu, and poses as Protector--The River Sz .

Further explanations regarding the grouping of states, and the size of the smallest states--Statesmen of all orthodox states acquainted with one another--No dialect difficulties in ancient times--Records exist for everything--Absence of caste, but persistence of the hereditary idea--The great political economist Kwan-tsz--Tsz-ch'an, the prince-statesman of Cheng--Shuh Hiang, statesman of Tsin--Reference to Appendix No. r--The statesman Yen- tsz of Ts'i--Confucius' origin as a member of the royal Sung family--Confucius' wanderings not so very extensive--Confucius no mere pedant, but a statesman and a humorist--Hiang Suh of Sung, inventor of "Hague" Conferences--Ki-chah, prince-envoy of Wu--K'u- peh-yuh, an authority in Wei--Ts'in had no literary men--Lao-% of Ts'u--Reasons why Confucius does not mention him

Life-time of Confucius--Secret of his influence--Visit of the Wu prince to Confucius' state--Lu's "powerful" family plague--Lu's position between Tsin and Ts'u influences--Ts'i studies the ritual in Lu: Yen-tsz goes thither--Sketch of Lu history in its connection with Confucius--What were his practical objects?-- Authorities in support of what Confucius' Annals tell us--Original conception of natural religion--Spread of the earliest patriarchal Chinese state--No other people near them possessed letters--The way in which the Chinese spread--Lines of least resistance--The spiritual emperor compared with some of the Popes--Lu's spiritual position--Confucius of Sung descent, and at first not an influential official in Lu--Lu's humiliation--Ts'i's intrigues to counteract Confucius' genius--Travels of Confucius and his history--His edited works.

Original notion of law--War and punishment on a level--Secondary punishments--Judgment given as each breach occurs--No distinction between legislative and judicial--Private rights ignored by the State--Public weal is Nature's law--First law reform for the Hundred Families--Dr. Legge's translation of the Code-- Proclamation of the Emperor's laws--Themistes or decisions-- Capricious instances: boiling alive by Emperor--Interference of Emperor in Lu succession--Tsang Wen-chung's coat--Barbarity of the Ts'u laws--Lu's influence with the Emperor--Tsin's engraved laws--Tsz-ch'an's laws on metal in Cheng--Confucius disapproves of published law--English judge-made law--All rulers accepted Chou law--Reading law over sacrificial victim--Laconic ancient laws-- Command emanates from the north--Definition of imperial power--The laws of Li K'wei in Ngwei state --Direct influence on modern law.

Engineering works of old Emperors--Marvellous chiselled gorge above Tch'ang--Pa and Shuh kingdoms --The engineer Li Ping in Sz Ch'wan: his sluices still in working order after 2200 years of use--Chinese ideas about the sources of the Yang-tsz--The Lolo country and its independence--The Yellow River and its vagaries--Substitution of the Chou dynasty for the Shang dynasty-- First rulers of Wu make a canal--Origin of the Grand Canal-- Explanation of the old riverine system of Shan Tung--Extension of the Canal by the First August Emperor--Kublai Khan's share in it-- The old Wu capital--Soochow and its ancient arsenals--No bridges in old clays: fords used--Instances--Limited navigability of northern rivers--Various Great Walls--Enormous waste of human life--New Ts'in metropolis--Forced labour and eunuchs.

Ancient cities mere hovels--Soul, the capital of modern Corea-- Modern cities still poor affairs--Want of unity causes downfall of Ts'in and China--Magnificence of Ts'i capital--Ts'u's palaces imitated in Lu--The capital of Wu--Modern Soochow--Nothing known of early Ts'in towns--Reforms of Wei Yang in Ts'in--Probable population--Magnificent buildings at new Ts'in metropolis-- Facility with which vassal states shifted their capitals-- Insignificant size of ancient principalities--Walled cities.

Collapse of Wu, flight in boats to Japan--Ground to believe that the ruling caste of Japan was influenced by Chinese colonists in the fifth century B.C.--Rise of Yueh, and action in China as Protector--Changes in the Hwai River system--Last days of the Chou dynasty--The year 403 B.C. is the second great pivot point in history--Undermining of Ts'i state by the T'ien or Ch'en family-- Confucius shocked at the murder of a Ts'i prince--Sudden rise of Ts'in after two centuries of stagnation--The reforms of Wei Yang lead to the conquest of China--Orthodox China compared with Greece--The "Fighting State" Period.

Titles of the Emperors of the Chou dynasty--The word "King" in modern times--Posthumous names--The title "Emperor" and the word "Imperial"--"God" confused with "Emperor"--Lao-tsz's view-- Comparison with Babylonia, Egypt, etc.--No feudal prince was recognized by the Emperor as possessing the same title as the Emperor--The Roman Emperors--The five ranks of nobles--The Emperor's private "dukes" compared with cardinals--The state of Lu--The state of Ts'i--The state of Tsin--No race hatreds in China--The state of Wei--Clanship between dynasties--Sacrificial rights--The state of Cheng: a fighting ground for all--The state of Ch'en--Explanation of the term "duke" as applied to all sovereign princes.

Period of fighting states--Tsin divided into Han, Ngwei, and Chao- Ts'in developing herself in Tartary and in Sz Ch'wan--Want of orderly method in Chinese history--How the statesmen of each vassal state developed resources--Ts'in's military development compared with that of Prussia from 1815 to 1870--"Perpendicular and Horizontal" period--Object to crush Ts'in--Rival claimants for universal empire--First appearance of the Huns or Turks-Helpless position of Old China--Bloody battles in Ts'in's final career of conquest--A million men decapitated--Immense cavalry fights- Ts'in's supreme effort for conquest of China.

The state of Wu--First Chinese princely emigrants adopted barbarian usages--The Jungle country and Wu--Wu's way of doing the hair and Wu's confession of barbarism--Federal China uses Wu against Ts'u--Wu the same language and manners as Yueh--Native Wu words--Wu's ignorance of war--Wu's early isolation--Ts'i enters into marriage relations with Wu--Mencius objects retrospectively-- Wu ruling caste--The Wu language--Succession laws of Wu--A Wu prince's views on the soul--Confucius' views on ghosts--Ki-chah's intimacy with orthodox statesmen--Rumours of Early Japan--Japan and Wu tattooing customs alike--Japanese traditions of a connection with Wu--Dangers of etymological guess-work--Doubts about racial matters in Wu--Small value of Japanese history and tradition--General conclusions.

Small size of ancient China--Description of ancient nucleus and surrounding barbarians--Amount of foreign element in each vassal state--Policy of the Ts'i and Lu administrations--The savage tribes of the eastern coasts--Persistency of some down to 970 A.D.--Ts'in's unliterary quality--Her human sacrifices--Her Turkish blood--Late influence of the Emperors over Ts'in--Ts'in's gradual civilization--Ki-chah on Ts'in music--Ts'u treats Ts'in as barbarian still in 361 B.C.--Ts'in's isolation previous to 326 B.C.--Tartar rule of succession at one time in Ts'in--Yiieh's barbarism--Its able king--Native name--Mushroom existence as a power--The various branches of the Yiieh race in Foochow, W&chow, and Tonquin--Wu and Yiieh spoke the same language--Ruling caste of Wu--Stern military discipline in Wu and Yiieh--Neither state proved to have had human sacrifices--Crawling customs--Ancient Chinese descent of rulers--Yiieh's later capital in the German sphere--Her power always marine.

Whence did the Chinese come?--All men of equal age and ancestry-- Records make civilization and nobility--Evidences of antiquity-- China and the West totally unknown to each other in ancient times-- Tartars the connecting link--Though tamed by religion they are not much changed now--Traders then, as now, but no through travellers--Chinese probably in China for myriads of years before their records began--Tonic peculiarities of all tribes near China except the Tartars--Chinese followed lines of least resistance-- Tartars driven back, but difficult to absorb--So with Coreans and Japanese-Indo-China not so favourable for Chinese absorption-- Records decided the direction taken by culture--Southern half- Chinese have equal claims with orthodox Chinese--Traditions of ancient emperors in north, coast, and south parts--Suggestions as to how the most ancient Chinese spread themselves--No hint of immigration from anywhere--The old suggestion of immigration from the Tarim Valley and Babylonia--Suggested compromise with Western religious views--Creation and Nature--Compromise with the supernatural and imaginative--Summing up.

The Chinese calendar--Confucius and eclipses--Proclaiming the new moon--Celestial observations in different states--Chinese year is luni-Solar--Difficulty with the exact length of a moon--Ingenious devices for bringing the solar and lunar years, the seasons, solstices, and equinoxes into harmony with agricultural needs--The sixty-year cycle--Various reforms of the calendar, and various changes in the month beginning the year--Effect of calendar changes on Confucius' birthday--All is evidence in favour of accuracy of the Chinese records.

The difficulty of proper names--Instances-Clans and detached families--Surnames and personal names--Strange personal appellations--Interchange of names by all states--Eunuchs and priests-Minute rules about "naming" individuals--Confucius conveys praise or censure by "naming" persons--The principles upon which several names are applied to one person--Tabu-Instances, and Roman parallel--The Duke of Chou virtual founder of posthumous name system--Dying king and posthumous choice of name--Incestuous marriages in own clan--Hushing up incest in high places-- Complication of names connected--Bearing of names upon the political events connected therewith.

Eunuchs and their origin--criminals with feet chopped off as keepers--Noseless criminals for isolated picket duty--The branded were gate-keepers--Eunuchs for the harem--"Purified men"-- Comparative antiquity of Persia and China--Eunuchs in Tsin--Ts'i eunuchs and Confucius--Eunuchs in Wu--Ts'u's uses for eunuchs-- Eunuch intrigues in connection with the First August Emperor--The First Emperor's putative father--His works--Eunuch witnesses assassination of Second August Emperor--General employ of eunuchs in China--Human sacrifices in Ts'in and Ts'u: also in Ts'i--Doubts as to its existence in orthodox China--Han Emperor's prohibition-- No fruit wine in ancient China--Spirits universal--Vice around ancient China rather than in it--Instances of heavy drinking in Ts'i and Ts'u--Tsin drinking--Confucius and liquor--Drinking in Ts'in--Ancient Chinese were meat-eaters--Horse-flesh and Tartars-- Horse-liver in Prussia--Anecdote of Duke Muh and the hippophagi-- Bears' paws as food--Elephants in Ts'u--Dogs as food.

The Emperor Muh's voyages to the West in 984 B.C.--The question of destroyed state annals-Exaggerated importance of the expedition, even if facts true--King Muh's father was killed in a similar expedition--Discovery of the Bamboo Books of 299 B.C. in 281 A.D.-- Imaginary interpretations put upon King Muh's expedition by European critics--The Queen of Sheba--Professor Chavannes attributes the travels of Duke Muh of Ts'in 650 B.C.--Description of first journey--Along the great road to Lob Nor-Modern evidence that he got as far as Urumtsi--Six hundred days, or 12,000 miles-- Specific evidence as to distance travelled each day--Various Tartar incidents of the journey--The Emperor's infatuation on the second journey--Lieh-tsz, the Taoist philosopher, on the Emperor Muh's travels--Arguments qualifying M. Chavannes' view that Duke Muh, and not the Emperor Muh, undertook the journeys.

Wu kingdom--Name begins 585 B.C.--This is the year Japanese "history" begins--The first king and his four sons--Prince Ki- chah--War with Ts'u and sacking of its capital--King Fu-ch'ai and his wars against Yiieh--Offered an asylum in Chusan--Suicide of Fu-ch'ai--Escape of his family across the seas to Japan--China knew nothing of Japan, even if Wu did--Story reduced to its true proportions--Traces of prehistoric men in Japan--Possible movements of original inhabitants--Existing evidence better than none at all--East from Ningpo must be Japan--Like early Greeks and Egyptian colonists--Natural impulses to emigration--Refugees from China compared to Will Adams--Natural desire to improve pedigrees-- No shame to Japan's ruling caste to hail from China--European comparisons--How the Japanese manufactured their past history-- Imagination must be kept separate from evidence.

Orthodox China compared with orthodox Greece--Our persistent "traditions" about the Tower of Babel and the Tarim Valley-Wu, Yiieh, and ancient traditions--The "Tribute of Yii" says nothing of Western origin of Chinese--No ancient knowledge of the West, nor of South China--The Blackwater River and the Emperor Muh--The "Tribute of Yii" says nothing of the supposed Western emigration of the Chinese--Some traditions of Chinese migrations from the south--Traditions of enfeoffment of vassals in Corea, about 1122 B.C.--Knowledge of China as defined by the First Protector, and as visited by the Second in the seventh century B.C.--Evidence of the Emperor's limited knowledge of China in 670 B.C.--Yiieh first appears in 536 B.C.--Tsin never saw the sea till 589 B.C.--Ts'i's ignorance of the south-u, Yiieh, and Ts'u all purely Yang-tsz riverine states--Ts'u alone knew the south--CH?NG's ignorance of the south--Ts'u and orthodox China of the same ancient stock-- Tsin's ignorance of Central China--Tsin defines Chinese limits for Ts'u--Ancient orthodox nucleus was the "Central State," a name still employed to mean "China" as a whole.

Evidences still remaining in the shape of the tombs of great historical personages--Elephants used to work at the Wu tombs-- Royal Ts'u tomb desecrated--Relics of 1122 B.C. found in Lu--Ts'in destitute of relics--Confucius and the Duke of Chou's relics--Each generation of Chinese sees and doubts not of its own antiquities-- No reason for European scepticism--Native critics know much more than we do.

From ancient times Tartars intimately connected with the Chinese-- How the Chou state had to migrate to avoid the Tartars--Chou ancestors had originally fled from China to the Tartars--Chou family's subsequent dealings with the Tartars--How Ts'in replaced Chou as the semi-Tartar or westernmost state of China--Tartars for many centuries in possession of Yellow River north bank--Once extended to Kiang Su province--Confucius' knowledge of the Tartars--Tartar attacks in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.-- Causes of the Protector system--Incompetence of Emperors to stave off Tartar attacks--Ts'i's extensive relations with the Tartars-- The Second Protector and his adviser--Rude treatment of the Second Protector by the orthodox Chinese states--Ts'u's bluff hospitality-- Second Protector had to check Chinese instead of Tartar ambitions-- Tsin's Tartar admixture--Comparison with Roman adventurers--How Tartars have in modern times ruled China and Asia.

Music in Chinese life--Confucius' present dwelling and the ancient instruments therein--Comparison with Wagner's Ring--Musicians as corrupters of simplicity--Tsin and Ts'in dialects--Music as an adjunct to government--Confucius' views on music--Ts'u music--The effect of music on the mind--Rewards in the shape of right to play certain tunes--The Emperor Muh's music--Music coupled with soothsaying--Lao-tsz on benevolence and justice-Playing the banjo-- Music at sacrifice or worship--Modern abstinence from music-- First August Emperor compared with Saul and his music.

Historians had to be careful--Reverence for rulers--Confucius' feelings--His failings--All on the surface--His concealments--His artful censures--Sanctity of the classes--Confucius' meannesses and indiscretions--Allowances must be made for time and place-- Tsz-ch'an quite as good a man--Reasons for permanency of Confucian system--Reasons for Lao-tsz not being mentioned--All Chinese statesman-philosophers were, or tried to be, practical--First mention of Lao-tsz's new Taoism--Lao-tsz well known 400 B.C.-- State intercourse before Confucius' time--Philosophy taught by word of mouth--Cheapening of books accounts for spread of knowledge--Description of ancient books--Confucius was young when he visited Lao-tsz--Lao-t&s book in ancient character--Meagreness of details evidence of rigid truth--Obscurity of the Emperor-- Difficult questions of fact answered--How Lao-tsz was visited-- Proofs of genuineness--Originals must be studied by foreign critics.

Personal character of wars--People's interests ignored--Instances-- Comparisons with the Golden Fleece and Naboth's vineyard--Second Protector avenges scurvy treatment--The halt, the maim, and the blind--Jephthah's rash vow-Divinity of kings--Ts'u more tyrannical than China--Responsibility of Chinese before Heaven--The King can do no wrong--Emperors reign under Heaven--Heaven in the confidence of rulers--Sacred person of kings--Distinction between official and private death--Double chivalry of a Tsin general--The gods and Tsz-ch'an's scepticism.

APPENDICES

INDEX

LIST OF MAPS

OPENING SCENES

The year 842 B.C. may be considered the first accurate date in Chinese history, and in this year the Emperor had to flee from his capital on account of popular dissatisfaction with his tyrannical ways: he betook himself northward to an outlying settlement on the Tartar frontier, and the charge of imperial affairs was taken over by a regency or duumvirate.

Thus, at the time of which we speak , about ten of the dozen or so of larger vassal princes were either of the same clan as the Emperor himself, or were descended from remoter branches of that clan before it secured the imperial throne; or, again, were descended from ministers and statesmen who had assisted the founder to obtain empire; whilst the two or three remaining great vassals were lineal representatives of previous dynasties, or of their great ministers, keeping up the honour and the sacrifices of bygone historical personages. As for the minor fiefs, numbering somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred, these play no part in political history, except as this or that one of them may have been thrust prominently forward for a moment as a pawn in the game of ambition played by the greater vassals. Nominally the Emperor was direct suzerain lord of all vassals, great or small; but in practice the greater vassal princes seem to have been what in the Norman feudal system were called "mesne lords"; that is, each one was surrounded by his own group of minor ruling lords, who, in turn, naturally clung for protection to that powerful magnate who was most immediately accessible in case of need; thus vassal rulers might be indefinitely multiplied, and there is some vagueness as to their numbers.

Accustomed as we now are to regard China as one vast homogeneous whole, approachable to us easily from the sea, it is not easy for us to understand the historical lines of expansion without these preliminary explanations. Corea and Japan were totally unknown even by name, and even Liao Tung, or "East of the River Liao," which was then inhabited by Corean tribes, was, if known by tradition at all, certainly only in communication with the remote Chinese colony, or vassal state, in possession of the Peking plain: on the other hand, this vassal state itself , for the three centuries previous to 842 B.C., had no political relations with the federated Chinese princes, and nothing is known of its internal doings, or of its immediate relations with Manchus and Coreans. The whole coast-line of Shan Tung was in the hands of various tribes of "Eastern Barbarians." True, a number of Chinese vassal rulers held petty fiefs to the south and the east of the two highly civilized principalities already described as being in possession of the Lower Yellow River; but the originally orthodox rulers of these petty colonies are distinctly stated to have partly followed barbarian usage, even despite their own imperial clan origin, and to have paid court to these two greater vassals as mesne lords, instead of direct to the Emperor. South of these, again, came the Hwai group of Eastern barbarians in possession of the Lower Hwai valley, and the various quite unknown tribes of Eastern barbarians occupying the marshy salt flats and shore accretions on the Kiang Su coast right down to the River Yang-tsz mouth.

It is, and will here be made, quite clear that the whole of the left bank of the Yellow River was in possession of various Turkish and Tartar-Tibetan tribes. The only exception is that the south- west corner of Shan Si province, notably the territory enclosed between the Yellow River and the River F&n was colonized by a branch of the imperial family quite capable of holding its own against the Tartars; in fact, the valley of this river as far north as P'ing-yang Fu had been in semi-mythical times the imperial residence. It will be noticed that the River Wei joins the Yellow River on its right bank, just opposite the point where this latter, flowing from the north, bends eastwards, the Wei itself flowing from the west. This Wei Valley was also in 842 B.C. colonized by an ancient Chinese family--not of imperial extraction so far as the reigning house was concerned--which, by adopting Tartar, or perhaps Tartar--Tibetan, manners, had for many generations succeeded in acquiring a predominant influence in that region. Assuming that--which is not at all improbable--the nomad horsemen in unchallenged possession of the whole desert and Tartar expanse had at any time, as a consequence of their raids in directions away from China westward, brought to China any new ideas, new commercial objects, or new religious notions, these novelties must almost necessarily have filtered through this semi- Chinese half-barbarous state in possession of the Wei Valley, or through other of their Tartar kinsmen periodically engaged in raiding the settled Chinese cultivators farther east, along the line of what is now the Great Wall, and the northern parts of Shan Si and Chih Li provinces.

We shall allude in a more convenient place and chapter to specific traditions touching the supposed journeys about 990 B.C. of a Chinese Emperor to Turkestan; the alleged missions from Tonquin to a still earlier Chinese Emperor or Regent; and the pretended colonization of Corea by an aggrieved Chinese noble-all three events some centuries earlier than the opening period of dated history of which we now specially speak. For the present we ignore them, as, even if true, these events have had, and have now, no specific or definite influence whatever on the question of Chinese political development as expounded here. It seems certain that for many centuries previous to 842 B.C. the ruling and the literary Chinese had known of the existence of at least the Lower Yang-tsz and its three mouths : they also seem to have heard in a vague way of "moving sands" beyond the great northerly bend of the Yellow River in Tartarland. It is not even impossible that the persistent traditions of two of their very ancient Emperors having been buried south of the Yang-tsz--one near the modern coast treaty-port of Ningpo, the other near the modern riverine treaty-port of Ch'ang-sha--may be true; for nothing is more likely than that they both met their death whilst exploring the tributaries of the mysterious Yang-tsz Kiang lying to their south; because the father of the adventurous Emperor who is supposed to have explored Tartary in ggo B.C. certainly lost his life in attempting to explore the region of Hankow, as will be explained in due course.

All this, however, is matter of side issue. The main point we wish to insist upon, by way of introduction, in endeavouring to give our readers an intelligible notion of early Chinese development, is that Chinese beginnings were like any other great nation's beginnings--like, for instance, the Greek beginnings; these were centred at first round an extremely petty area, which, gradually expanding, threw out its tentacles and branches, and led to the final inclusion of the mysterious Danube, the gloomy Russian plain, the Tin Islands, Ultima Thule, and the Atlantic coasts into one fairly harmonious Graeco-Roman civilization. Or it may be compared to the development of the petty Anglo-Saxon settlements and kingdoms and sub-kingdoms, and their gradual political absorption of the surrounding Celts. In any case it may be said that there is nothing startlingly new about it; it followed a normal course.

SHIFTING SCENES

Having now seen how the Chinese people, taking advantage of the material and moral growth naturally following upon a settled industrial existence, and above all upon the exclusive possession of a written character, gradually imposed themselves as rulers upon the ignorant tribes around them, let us see to what families these Chinese emigrant adventurers or colonial satraps belonged. To begin with the semi-Tartar power in the River Wei Valley-- destined six hundred years later to conquer the whole of China as we know it to-day--the ruling caste claimed descent from the most ancient Emperors of China; but for over a thousand years previous to 842 B.C. this remote branch of the Chinese race had become scattered and almost lost amongst the Tartars. However, a generation or two before our opening period, one of these princes had served the then ruling imperial dynasty as a sort of guardian to the western frontier, as a rearer of horses for the metropolitan stud, and perhaps even as a guide on the occasion of imperial expeditions into Tartarland. The successor of the Emperor who was driven from his capital in 842 B.C. about twenty years later employed this western satrap to chastise the Tartar nomads whose revolt had in part led to the imperial flight. After suffering some disasters, the conductors of this series of expeditions were at last successful, and in 815 B.C. the title of "Warden of the Western Marches" was officially conferred on the ruler for the time being of this western state, who in 777 B.C. had the further honour of seeing one of his daughters married to the Emperor himself. This political move on the part of the Emperor was unwise, for it led indirectly to the Tartars, who were frequently engaged in war with the Warden, interfering in the quarrels about the imperial succession, in which question the Tartars naturally thought they had a right to interfere in the interests of their own people. The upshot of it was that in 771 B.C. the Emperor was killed by the Tartars in battle, and it was only by securing the military assistance of the semi-Tartar Warden of the Marches that the imperial dynasty was saved. As it was, the Emperor's capital was permanently moved east from the immediate neighbourhood of what we call Si-ngan Fu in Shen Si province to the immediate neighbourhood of Ho-nan Fu in the modern Ho Nan province; and as a reward for his services the Warden was granted nearly the whole of the original imperial patrimony west of the Yellow River bend and on both sides of the Wei Valley. This was also in the year 771 B.C., and this is really one of the great pivot-points in Chinese history, of equal weight with the almost contemporaneous founding of Rome, and the gradual substitution of a Roman centre for a Greek centre in the development and civilization of the Far West. The new capital was not, however, a new city. Shortly after the imperial dynasty gained the possession of China in 1122 B.C., it had been surveyed, and some of the regalia had been taken thither; this, with a view of making it one of the capitals at least, if not the sole capital.

From this date of 771 B.C., and for five hundred years more down to 250 B.C., when the Chou dynasty was extinguished, the rule of the feudal Emperors of China was almost purely nominal, and except in so far as this or that powerful vassal made use of the moral, and even occasionally of the military power of the metropolitan district when it suited his purpose, the imperial ruler was chiefly exercised in matters of form and ritual; for under all three patriarchal dynasties it was on form and ritual that the idea of government had always been based. Of course the other powerful satraps--especially the more distant ones, those not bearing the imperial clan-name, and those more or less tinged with barbarian usages--learning by degrees what a helpless and powerless personage the Emperor had now become, lost no time in turning the novel situation to their own advantage: it is consequently now that begins the "tyrant period," or the period of the "Five Dictators," as the Chinese historians loosely term it: that is to say, the period during which each satrap who had the power to do so took the lead of the satrap body in general, and gave out that he was restoring the imperial prestige, representing the Emperor's majesty, carrying out the behests of reason, compelling the other vassals to do their duty, keeping up the legitimist sacrifices, and so on. In other words, the population of China had grown so enormously, both by peaceful in-breeding and by imperceptible absorption of kindred races, that more elbow-room was needed; more freedom from the shackles of ritual, rank, and feudal caste; more independence, and more liberty to take advantage of local or changed traditions. Besides all this, the art of writing, though still clumsy, expensive, and confined in its higher and literary aspects to the governing classes, had recently become simplified and improved; the salt trade, iron trade, fish industry, silk industry, grain trade, and art of usury had spread from one state to the other, and had developed: though the land roads were bad or non-existent, there were great numbers of itinerant dealers in cattle and army provisions. In a word, material civilization had made great strides during the thousand years of patriarchal rule immediately preceding the critical period comprised between the year 842 B.C. and the year 771 B.C. The voices of the advocates and the preachers of ancient patriarchal virtues were as of men crying in a wilderness of substantial prosperity and manly ambition. Thus political and natural forces combined with each other to prepare the way for a radical change, and this period of incipient revolution is precisely the period treated of in Confucius' history, the first history of China--meagre though it be--which deals with definite human facts, instead of "beating the air" with sermons and ritualistic exhortations.

THE NORTHERN POWERS

The Yellow River, running from north to south, not only roughly separated from each other these two Tartar-Chinese buffer states in the north-west, but the same Yellow River, flowing east, and its tributary, the River Wei, also formed a rough boundary between the two states of Tsin and Ts'in to the north, and the innumerable petty but ancient Chinese principalities surrounding the imperial domain to the south. These principalities or settlements were scattered about among the head-waters of the Han River and the Hwai River systems, and their manifest destiny, if they needed expansion, clearly drove them further southwards, following the courses of all these head-waters, towards the Yang- tsz Kiang. But, more than that, the Yellow River, after thus flowing east for several hundred miles, turned sharp north in long. 114? E., as already explained, and thence to the north-east formed a second rough boundary between Tsin and nearly all the remaining orthodox Chinese states. Tsin's chief task was thus to absorb into its administrative system all the Tartar raiders that ventured south to the Yellow River.

North of the Yellow River, where it then entered the sea near the modern treaty-port of Tientsin, there was yet another great vassal state, called Yen, which had been given by the founders of the Chou dynasty to a very distinguished blood relative and faithful supporter: this noble prince has been immortalized in beautiful language on account of the rigid justice of his decisions given under the shade of an apple-tree: it was the practice in those days to render into popular song the chief events of the times, and it is not improbable, indeed, that this Saga literature was the only popular record of the past, until, as already hinted, after 827 B.C., writing became simplified and thus more diffused, instead of being confined to solemn manifestoes and commandments cast or carved on bronze or stone.

"Oh! woodman, spare that tree, Touch not a single bough, His wisdom lingers now."

The words, singularly like those of our own well-known song, are known to every Chinese school-boy, and with hundreds, even thousands, of other similar songs, which used to be daily quoted as precedents by the statesmen of that primitive period in their political intercourse with each other, were later pruned, purified, and collated by Confucius, until at last they received classical rank in the "Book of Odes" or the "Classic of Poetry," containing a mere tenth part of the old "Odes" as they used to be passed from mouth to ear.

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