of voice as follows: "Dragon, how dare you hide yourself there under
a borrowed form?" Shen Lang then reassumed the form of a spiritual
alligator, and Hsue Sun ordered the spiritual soldiers to kill him. He
then commanded his two sons to come out of their abode. By merely
spurting a mouthful of water on them he transformed them into young
dragons. Chia Yue was told to vacate the rooms with all speed, and
in the twinkling of an eye the whole _yamen_ sank beneath the earth,
and there remained nothing but a lake where it had been.

Hsue Chen-chuen, after his victory over the dragon, assembled the members
of his family, to the number of forty-two, on Hsi Shan, outside the
city of Nan-ch'ang Fu, and all ascended to Heaven in full daylight,
taking with them even the dogs and chickens. He was then 133 years
old. This took place on the first day of the eighth moon of the second
year (A.D. 374) of the reign-period Ning-K'ang of the reign of the
Emperor Hsiao Wu Ti of the Eastern Chin dynasty.

Subsequently a temple was erected to him, and in A.D. 1111 he was
canonized as Just Prince, Admirable and Beneficent.

The Great Flood

The repairing of the heavens by Nue Kua, elsewhere alluded to, is also
attributed to the following incident.

Before the Chinese Empire was founded a noble and wonderful queen
fought with the chief of the tribes who inhabited the country round
about O-mei Shan. In a fierce battle the chief and his followers met
defeat; raging with anger at being beaten by a woman, he rushed up
the mountain-side; the Queen pursued him with her army, and overtook
him at the summit; finding no place to hide himself, he attempted in
desperation both to wreak vengeance upon his enemies and to end his
own life by beating his head violently against the cane of the Heavenly
Bamboo which grew there. By his mad battering he at last succeeded in
knocking down the towering trunk of the tree, and as he did so its
top tore great rents in the canopy of the sky, through which poured
great floods of water, inundating the whole earth and drowning all the
inhabitants except the victorious Queen and her soldiers. The floods
had no power to harm her or her followers, because she herself was
an all-powerful divinity and was known as the 'Mother of the Gods,'
and the 'Defender of the Gods.' From the mountain-side she gathered
together stones of a kind having five colours, and ground them into
powder; of this she made a plaster or mortar,