ce of refuge because it lay near the borders
of Tartary. It is noteworthy that a loyal governor of Honan at that
very time prepared a palace for her accommodation in K'ai-fung-fu,
and when the court was invited to return to Peking, he implored
her not to risk herself in the northern capital.

Honan is a province rich in agricultural, and probably
[Page 43]
in mineral, resources, but it has no outlet in the way of trade.
What a boon this railway is destined to be, as a channel of
communication with neighbouring provinces!

I crossed the Yellow River in 1866, but there was then no bridge
of any kind. Two-thirds of a mile in width, with a furious current,
the management of the ferry-boat was no easy task. On that occasion
an object which presented stronger attractions than this wonderful
bridge had drawn me to K'ai-fung-fu--a colony of Jews, a fragment
of the Lost Tribes of Israel. As mentioned in a previous chapter, I
had come by land over the very track now followed by the railroad,
but under conditions in strong contrast with the luxuries of a
railway carriage--"Alone, unfriended, solitary, slow," I had made my
way painfully, shifting from horse to cart, and sometimes compelled
by the narrowness of a path to descend to a wheelbarrow. How I
longed for the advent of the iron horse. Now I have with me a jovial
company; and we may enjoy the mental stimulus of an uninterrupted
session of the Oriental Society, while making more distance in
an hour than I then made in a day.

Of the condition of the Jews of K'ai-fung-fu, as I found them,
I have given a detailed account elsewhere.[*] Suffice it to say
here that the so-called colony consisted of about four hundred
persons, belonging to seven families or clans. Undermined by a
flood of the Yellow River, their synagogue had become ruinous,
and, being unable to repair it, they had disposed of its timbers
to relieve the pressure of their dire poverty.
[Page 44]
Nothing remained but the vacant space, marked by a single stone
recording the varying fortunes of these forlorn Israelites. It
avers that their remoter ancestors arrived in China by way of India
in the Han dynasty, before the Christian era, and that the founders
of this particular colony found their way to K'ai-fung-fu in the
T'ang dynasty about 800 A. D. It also gives an outline of their
Holy Faith, showing that, in all their wanderings, they had not
forsaken the God of their fathers. They still possessed some rolls
o