nd
progress of these new conquerors we are now concerned.

In the northeast of China, beyond the Great Wall and bordering on Corea,
lies the province of Liautung. Northward from this to the Amur River
extends the eastern section of the steppes, known on modern maps as
Manchuria. From these broad wilds the Kins had advanced to their
conquest of Northern China. To them they fled for safety from the Mongol
arms, and here lost their proud name of Kin and resumed their older and
humbler one of Niuche. For some five centuries they remained here
unnoticed and undisturbed, broken up into numerous small clans, none of
much strength and importance. Of these clans, which were frequently in a
state of hostility to one another, there is only one of interest, that
of the Manchus.

The original seat of this small Tartar clan lay not far north of the
Chinese border, being on the Soodsu River, about thirty miles east of
the Chinese city of Moukden. Between the Soodsu and Jiaho streams, and
south of the Long White Mountains, lies the valley of Hootooala, a
location of rugged and picturesque scenery. This valley, protected on
three sides by water and on the fourth by a lofty range of mountains,
the whole not more than twelve miles long, formed the cradle of the
Manchu race, the narrow realm from which they were to emerge to victory
and empire. In a certain respect it resembled the native home of the
Mongols, but was far smaller and much nearer the Chinese frontier.

In this small and secluded valley appeared, about the middle of the
fourteenth century, when the emperor Hongwou was fighting with the
Mongols, a man named Aisin Gioro. Tradition attributes to him a
miraculous birth, while calumny asserts that he was a runaway Mongol;
but at any rate he became lord of Hootooala and ancestor of its race of
conquerors. Five generations from him came a chief named Huen, who ruled
over the same small state, and whose grandson, Noorhachu by name, born
in 1559, was the man upon whom the wonderful fortunes of the Manchus
were to depend. Like many other great conquerors, his appearance
predicted his career. "He had the dragon face and the phoenix eye; his
chest was enormous, his ears were large, and his voice had the tone of
the largest bell."

He began life like many of the heroes of folk-lore, his step-mother,
when he was nineteen years of age, giving him a small sum of money and
turning him out into the world to seek his fortune. She repented