'THe frat notice of maritime expeditions among the Chinese occurs in connection with the Wa country about five hundred years before Christ, The region so named -ceutred its forces as an agricultural and commercial State for a long period at Nanking, but for still longer time at Soochow, and now perhaps it may be said in regard to trade and wealth that Shanghai is ils capital. Before Nanking become the sent of empire about sixteen hundred years ago, the activity of this region in the use of river-boats and sea-going jauks had begun. The Wa kingdom, with its capital near the present Soochow, was powerfal enough to be able in B.C, 486, when Confucius was an old man, to send a fleet with troops trained to junk life to invade the sister state of sti in Northern Shantang. The troops would be conveyed up the Bani River or partly lauded possibly in the bay of Chiad-chen a port on the south side of the Shantang Promontory, from which communication was easy into the Ts' kingdom, which stretched from the mountain Tai Shan on the south to the Yellow River in the north, At that time Chinese colonize. tion in the regions round the T'ai Hu and especially on the north-enst had assumed @ very prospe aspect, The city of Soochow had already been founded ten or twenty years before, and was the capital of the Wa kingdom, bat was known two thousand ago in the period of which we are speaking as the city of Ho-li PAPE, the name of one of the Kings. Agricullare makes the strength of a State, says th ge proverb, and it was the thriving rice and wheat fields of id the great alluvial pi in of which Shang. Lai is now: the business centre, which gave to the Wu people of those primitive the power to create a navy suffi.
for the conveyance of an army to ade Shantung by entering the Huai river some 200 miles north of Shanghai.
The Masse of History has always preferred to sing of war rather than commerce, because fighting stirs ful occupations of industry.
The diligent cultivation of the land had been pro-were watered by the mighty Yangtsze and its tributaries. Thus had sprung up the three powerful kingdoms of Ch'n, Waanud Yueh. The Muse records their fighting expedi thing of the labours of the water-buffalo in ploughing, the up-growth of ubiquitons boat traffic, the origin of the market towns, the money then in use, or the change in habits occasioned by the emigration of the Chinese race from the colder regions of the north to the hotter plains of the south. Thus when the King of the Yash country then ruling the region bordering on the Golf of Hangchow sent.a force by sea almost'to the Promontory to check the Wan kingdom in its attempts to disturb the tranquillity of the northern States, a note is made of the fact. Soon the Tsi country traders must have followed the example of Wa and Yueh, and constructed janks fit to go to sea from the month of the Yellow River, which was then about seventy English miles south of Taku, thus rendering it possible to make use of a navy in war, History does not speak of the gradual growth of commercial prosperity in these two regions from the trade in sill, agriculture, the fisheries, and the production of salt on the sea shore; but when the famous Emperor Han Wa Ti a century before the Christian era resolved to nse a navy and with it effect the conquest of Corea, history is no longer mate.
Naval expeditions are not previously mentioned in ancient Chinese history. Large trading jane may well have existed before, for Wa was an old State, and was among the baroui time of the Shang dynasty, although in connection with Chou; and it was not Uill the days of the fifth barou# that the transfer of the Empire to the Chou dynasty was effected. We oan truce back the Wa kingdom in this way to a time seven centuries anterior to the first of th 1! expedition but nothing is said of a navy. Perhaps it is best to suppose that the preceding seven centuries were necessary for the growth of the Chinese colonies and the consolidation of the power of their rulers. The naval expeditions to the north fix an epoch in history, and help us to understand the amount of progress then attained by China in do. veloping agricultural wealth, and the war.
The power of the attacked and killed by the King of Yueh, who in his (arn invaded the north and had great military successes. Not long after his death his territory was split into hundred small States, destined a little Inter to be absorbed into the powerful Kingdom of Oh'u on the west. This was the state of things when the Alexander of China came with an overwhelming force, and made himself master of all the southern colonies of the Chinese, as well as of their original seats in the north, Canton, Faltion, Kanngei and Cochin-China were made part of hie dominions, and probably not without the use of naval force which is expressly mentioned at Can. ton a little Jater in the times of Han Wa Ti, who reconquered all those regions.t Chinese RecorderVol, XIII, July—August, 1882. Notes on the History of Soochow, by Rev. A. P. there an Ley p. 108, In this work by Dr. which help greatly in jucidating the political geography of the time of Confucius,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.