Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/266

 BBI 242 NUJTTN. city on the west bonk of the Songaxi, somewhere north of Eirin. They were guided by a man on a cream coloured horse, who went ahead ; the rest following, without question, whither he led. When they got to the deep river, they had no ferry-boats ; but the cream horse went ahead up to the belly in water, the army wading after him. After Whangloong had fallen the river was attempted ; but the depth was beyond sounding ! Hence the Kin raised a temple on the western bank ; dedicated to the god of the river for his miraculous interference. Immediately on the fall of Whangloong city, the hardy Kin pushed southwards ; Agooda only then permitting the return of the messenger who had come from the Liao, four months befora He desired him to say to his lord in Peking, that if Asoo the hiding chief were handed over, the Kin would return to their homes again. The messenger doubtless understood as weU as Agooda what the worth of such a promise was, and that the Kin could now " return '* only by the defeat of their army. There was no withstanding the fury of the Kin attacks, and in the beginning of 1118, the joyful Sung emperor sent messengers to Kin by way of Tungchow of Shantung, to heartily congratulate Agooda on his frequent victories, and on the capture of fifty walled cities of Liao. This message was intended, like preceding overtures, to form an alliance which Agooda was now only too glad to maka To add to the difficulties of the Liao, there were then, as so often, and again as we write, terrible famines in northern China^ which compelled men to eat human .flesh as their only food. Indeed, in West Shantung, Shansi, Shensi, and Honan, this cannibalism, caused by severe famine, has been repeated at irregular intervals for thousands of years, and is not at all the uncommon portent it is believed to be ; though the authori- ties have always been most severe in their prohibitive measures. In 1120, a treaty was concluded between Sung and Kin, after several messengers had come and gone, by which, as the "land of Yen'' was originally Chinese, all the lands up to and including Ten* would become Chinese, while the Liao
 * Modem Peking.