about 800 A. D. to commemorate
the introduction of Christianity by some Nestorian missionaries
from western Asia.

The province of Kansuh is comparatively barren. Its boundaries
extend far out into regions peopled by Mongol tribes; and the
neighbourhood of great deserts gives it an arid climate unfavourable
to agriculture. Many of its inhabitants are immigrants from Central
Asia and profess the Mohammedan faith. It is almost surrounded by
the Yellow River, like a picture set in a gilded frame, reminding
one of that river of paradise which "encompasseth the whole land
of Havilah where there is gold." Whether there is gold in Kansuh
we have yet to learn; but no doubt some grains of the precious
metal might be picked up amongst its shifting sands.

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CHAPTER XII

OUTLYING TERRITORIES

_Manchuria--Mongolia--Turkestan--Tibet, the Roof of the World--Journey
of Huc and Gabet._

Beyond the eastern extremity of the Great Wall, bounded on the
west by Mongolia, on the north by the Amur, on the east by the
Russian seaboard, and on the south by Korea and the Gulf of Pechili,
lies the home of the Manchus--the race now dominant in the Chinese
Empire. China claims it, just as Great Britain claimed Normandy,
because her conquerors came from that region; and now that two
of her neighbours have exhausted themselves in fighting for it,
she will take good care that neither of them shall filch the jewel
from her crown.

That remarkable achievement, the conquest of China by a few thousand
semi-civilised Tartars, is treated in the second part of this work.

Manchuria consists of three regions now denominated provinces,
Shengking, Kairin, and Helungkiang. They are all under one
governor-general whose seat is at Mukden, a city sacred in the
eyes of every Manchu, because there are the tombs of the fathers
of the dynasty.

The native population of Manchuria having been drafted off to garrison
and colonise the conquered
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country, their deserted districts were thrown open to Chinese settlers.
The population of the three provinces is mainly Chinese, and,
assimilated in government to those of China, they are reckoned
as completing the number of twenty-one. Opulent in grain-fields,
forests, and minerals, with every facility for commerce, no part of
the empire has a brighter future. So thinly peopled is its northern
portion that it continues to be a vast hunting-ground which supplies
the Chinese market with sables