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centuries, the Chinese acquired a surprisingly accurate knowledge of the
north-east coast of Asia, extending, as their records in astronomy and
natural history prove, to the sixty-fifth degree of latitude, and even
to the Arctic Ocean.' From the Chinese _Book of Mountains and Seas_, it
appears that the Esquimaux and their country were well known to the
Chinese, and that in the sixth century, natives of the North and of the
islands bordering on America, came with Japanese embassies to China.
When it is borne in mind that the early Chinese geographers and
astronomers determined on the situations of these northern regions, with
an accuracy which has been of late years surprisingly verified by
eminent European men of science, and when we learn that the Year Books
or annals of China continually repeat these observations, and that their
accounts of the natives of the islands within a few miles of the
American shore are as undoubtedly correct as they are minute, we
certainly have good reason for assuming that their description of the
main land and its inhabitants is well worthy, if not of implicit belief,
at least of an investigation by the savans of the Western World. Be it
borne in mind, also, that during the first eight centuries of our own
Christian era, a spirit of discovery in foreign lands was actively at
work all over the East. In the words of Neumann:

'In the first century of our reckoning, the pride and vanity
induced by the Chinese social system was partly broken by the
progress of Buddhism over all Eastern Asia. He who believed in the
divine mission of the son of the King of Kaphilapura, must
recognize every man as his brother and equal by birth; yes, must
strive (for the old Buddhism has this in common with the Christian
religion) to extend the joyful mission of salvation to all the
nations on the earth, and to attain this end must suffer, like the
type of the God Incarnate, all earthly pain and persecution. So we
find that a number of Buddhist monks and preachers have at distant
times wandered to all known and unknown parts of the world, either
to obtain information with regard to their distant
co-religionists, or to preach the doctrine of the Holy Trinity to
unbelievers. The official accounts which these missionaries have
rendered of their travels, and of which we possess several
_entire_, considered as sources of information with regard to