been to that country—and they are few—report the king’s house to be covered with gold (as churches are here with lead), gilded windows, and that they also have many jewels!”
We can imagine the excitement in the stately palaces, and on the marble quays of Venice, when her merchants read this tale, the truth of much of which was subsequently proved; and how they longed that their “talle shippes,” “those proud argosies,” which had explored the inhospitable coasts of Northern Europe, and penetrated to the further shores of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, should likewise attain and secure for the Queen of the Adriatic the promised wealth of that wondrous Zipangu.
They had not, however, been the first to break the Tenth Commandment—to covet that which Providence had given unto others—and Marco Polo relates how his great patron, the conqueror of China, Kublai Khan, had been stimulated to bring the Britain of the Pacific under his paternal sway. Small measure of grace, small persuasion would have fallen to the fair-skinned dwellers in Nipon or Zipangu, could Kublai have reached them with his Tartar hordes. Dieu merci! horses may not swim the deep sea, and a small breadth of blue water stayed the charge of the Tartar cut-throat of the olden day, as we trust it may do the pas accelerè of the more modern Zouaves or Turcos into our own good land. Kublai Khan proceeded therefore to expound certain philosophical principles to the Wang or King of Nipon, in a communication which would vie, in some respects, with similar documents that we have seen of late years appear from other great potentates who dwell nearer to the meridian of Greenwich. We give it verbatim as a charming exemplification of the ancient fable of the wolf and the lamb.
The “exalted Emperor of the Mongols” from his capital of Cambolu, supposed to be the present Pekin, writes in the year of Grace, 1278, to the Wang, or King of Nipon, as follows:
“I am a prince of a formerly small state to which the adjacent lands have united themselves, and my endeavour is to make inviolable truth and friendship reign among us. What is more, my ancestors have, in virtue of their splendid warrant from Heaven, taken possession of Hia dominions (? China). The number of distant countries and of remote cities that fear our power, and love our virtue, passes computation. Nipon lies near, and has, from the beginning held intercourse with the central empire. But, during my reign, not a single envoy has appeared to open a friendly intercourse with me. I apprehend that this state of things is not, as yet, well known in your country, wherefore I send envoys with a letter to make you acquainted with my views, and I hope we shall understand each other. Already philosophers desire to see the whole world form one family. But how may this one family principle be carried into effect if friendly intercourse subsist not between us? I am resolved to call this principle into existence, even should I be obliged to do so by force of arms! It is now the business of the Wang of Nipon to decide what course is most agreeable to him!”
As a specimen of imperial correspondence, in the year of Grace, 1278, we may say that this document is not an uninteresting one, though it failed in convincing the ruler of Japan (then called the Zio-goon) of the advisability of entering into “amity and friendship” with such a ruffian. Kublai proceeded to enforce his arguments, and a mighty fleet put forth from the shores of the wide-spreading Yangstye-keang to the shallow waters, and hardier climes of Pechalee and the hosts of Tartary sailed for the subjugation of the Isles of the Day-dawn. It was another Armada, and met with the same well-deserved fate. Storms swept the rocky shores of Kin-su, the southernmost island of the Japanese group, and by shipwreck, famine, and the sword of the islanders, nearly all that vast force perished.
Yet, in days still more remote, a peaceful conquest of Japan had been effected by the swarming hive of human beings located in the great plain which forms the heart of China. The Chinese dwelling in that rich valley of the Yangstye-keang appear from the earliest ages to have been the prey of their neighbours, or else to have been constantly over-run by fresh inroads from those wide plains of Mongolia whence they derived their origin. Pressed on by the sword of a conqueror, or fleeing from the plague, pestilence, and famine which followed in his path, it was but natural, whilst portions of the Chinese masses fled over the lofty mountain ranges which lie south of the Yangstze, and so reached the rich provinces which now constitute the tropical portion of that great empire, that another exodus took place from the seaboard, whence the unhappy fugitives took ship and fled eastward across the great ocean, in search of that peace and security which was denied them at home. Chinese and Japanese records happily approximate in their dates of one such exodus; and, taking the latter as our guide, we learn that about 300 years before the advent of the Saviour, there arrived from the “setting sun” (China) a number of beneficent strangers, led by one who combined, like another Moses, the triple office of legislator, high priest, and generalissimo. This great leader, Sin-fuh, has since been deified in Japan: but the occasion of his peaceful invasion of that land is otherwise explained by the myth-loving historians of China. They tell, that during the reign of one Hwang-te, 300 couple of young men and women were sent across the eastern sea in search of the waters of immortality; and that these wanderers elected one Sin-fuh as their leader, and, under his skilful guidance, after dire adventures by sea and land, reached the pleasant shores of Nipon—it was their Canaan. It is more than probable that the aboriginal race then found in Kiu-siu and Nipon Islands was of those same Ainos who now dwell in Yesso and the Kurile Islands; and the sword, as well as the milder influence of a superior civilisation, had doubtless much to do with the moulding of the Japanese people and government into what we now find them. From the reign of this warrior priest, Sin-fuh, date most of the arts and sciences now existing in that country, and his rule must have rapidly spread from the southern portion of the empire as far as the latitude of