Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/244

 220 KITAN. the Chinese weakened empire. He ended by imprisoning Kwun « for ten days, at the end of which he had him brought into the royal presence, paper and ink set before him, with first the desire, then the command^ to have Yowchow ceded over in writing. If Kwun was weak, he was no traitor ; and neither smUes nor frowns, neither promises of advantage nor threats against his life, moved him from his fixed purpose not to betray his country. He was therefore again locked up, and in a few days thereafter Abaoji died in the city of Fooyu. Shoolu, the wife of Abaoji and mother of Tooyii, was a masculine woman of extraordinary abilities but fiercely cruel, delighting in bloodshed. When her husband was dying, she summoned all his principal officers to his bedside along with their wives, and said to the latter, " To-day I am to be a widow: it is not well that you should have husbands.'^ Whereupon she ordered a hundred of the chief officials to be put to death, saying, " Let them follow and serve their former lord." One military officer of the household, both an able man and a powerful, was greatly beloved by Abaoji, and was nominated to Mooyeshan (" Hill of Graves "), along with the others. He was apparently warmly objecting to the honour, for Shoolu said to him, " Your former master delighted in you, why is it you will not go?'' He replied, "My late lord loved no one as he loved you, why do you not go ? " She said she was most willing to go, but that her son was a child, and that most important affairs relating to the welfare of the kingdom detained her. She then turned towards her attendants, and, stretching out her right arm, ordered them to cut it off from the shoulder, and send it to be buried with her husband. The attendants fell on their knees, and implored her not to do such a thing. She at last consented to have it cut off as low as the elbow joint, and the arm was buried with her husband, to shew her affection ; but the officer had saved his life, for he was liberated, and no more were slain. Abaoji's body was buried in Mooyeshan 300 li from Shangking. We know that the splendid Yiwoolu mountains of Kwangning in Liaosi, just bordering Mongol land, was the burial place of some