Page:China historical and descriptive.djvu/24

 Manchoo conquerors assumed the throne they adopted the title of Thsing (pure), and their subjects hastened to call themselves Thsing-jin, or " Men of Thsing;" in fact, it was precisely as though the English had taken in succession the names of Plantagenet men, Tudor men, Stuart men, and Guelph men, according to the reigning dynasties of the kingdom.

The name of China comes to us from the Malays, who first became acquainted with the empire when its inhabitants bore the name of Thsing-jin. It so happened that the Malay alphabet was short of the letters required for the exact expression of the word, but they did their best with the means at hand, and turned Thsing into Tchina. The descendants of these Malays designated the great empire thus in describing it to the Portuguese, and through the latter the name of China — for the T was soon dropped — became current, with slight modifications, amongst European nations. By the Eastern Eussians and the inhabitants of Northern Asia it is called Kitai or Katai, from whence the ancient name "Cathay."

Having arrived at the origin of its name, let us now turn to the geography of China. The Empire, situated in Eastern Asia, comprises the eighteen Provinces of China proper, Manchooria, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan, Kokonor, and Thibet, whilst the Isthmus of Corea and the Loo-choo Islands are among its nominal dependencies. It is bounded on the north and north-east by Asiatic Eussia, whose territory on the Pacific recently acquired from China touches the Corean frontier; east and south-east by the