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52 trammels, refined (like smelted ore), and transformed. They relied upon the cult of the kuei and the shên. Tsou Yen was famed among various feudal princes for his treatise on the control exercised by the Yin and the Yang over evolution. The magicians, who inhabited the coastal regions of Yen and Ch'i handed down his mystic doctrines without being able to understand them. Moreover, then it was that men versed in strange wonders and deceitful flattery, and knowing how to ingratiate themselves with the people by base means, multiplied in countless numbers. The sending of men to sea in search of P‘êng-lai, Fang-chang, and Ying Chou dates from the time of Wei and Hsüan and Chao of Yen."

We know that Prince Wei ruled over the State of Ch‘i from 378 to 333, and Hsüan was the name of his successor. Prince Chao ascended the throne of Yen in 311. This passage, therefore, provides a highly important fact, namely, that belief in the Isles nearly 400 years before Christ was sufficiently robust to encourage the fitting out of expeditions to search the seas for them. The statement may be accepted without reservation, especially in view of the freedom from partiality shown by the writer. It is evident that Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien was not one of those taken in by Taoist adventurers, who would naturally claim the sanction of antiquity for their doctrines. Indeed, one of them is quoted as describing meetings between the Yellow Emperor and the inhabitants of P‘êng-lai. Such an early date for the belief was undoubtedly imaginary, and though we may suppose the notion existed some time before the first