Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/286

 262 COREA. is like a little boat, from the bottom of a sea trough beginning gradually and painfully to climb to the top of the billow, which it no sooner reaches than it begins to go down again. The lands to the west and north-west of the Taloo, once in Gaoli hands, were now, and almost ever since the crushing conquest of Gaoli, along with all Liaotung and most of Liaosi, in the power of Bohai to the north, whither many myriads of Gaoli had resorted. But if Gaoli found it impossible to march westwards, it made itself amends by crossing the Datong, Hiwngjin, Han, and other rivers;* and, in 936-7, annexing, under king Jien, the whole of Baiji and Sinlo, whereupon Jien's right to the throne was acknowledged by all the "eastern barbarians/' He thus united, for the first time, into one compact kingdom, the peninsula now known as Corea ; which, subject to much plundering from Japan and to the si)ent force of revolutions in China, has remained intact to the present day, and has long been firmly welded into one. Jien had six foo, nine jidoo, and one hundred and twenty kun cities ; imitating the Chinese classification of departmental, sub-prefectural, and district cities. His descendants ruled over Gaoli for 400 years. He made his capital at Soongyao ; Fingyang being called the west capital In 946, the then Sung emperor, having heard of the renovated life of Gaoli, sent messengers to form an alliance with them to march against the now powerful Kitan, who had lately taken most of Bohai. The messengers found the Corean king willing to undertake the task in order to recover those large tracts of Bohai which formerly belonged to Gaoli ; but they pronounced the Gaoli soldiers so thoroughly ineflScient, that they would not dare look at the Kitan. The Kitan had soon thereafter become a great power in the north of China, occupying the old kingdom of Wei and Han, and commanding eastern Mongolia^ Liaotung, and the Nujun. They did not pay much respect to the king of Gaoli, who was often insulted by the presence of their brave troops. As he could not however gain any hopes of aid firom the ♦See "Modem Corea'* Ch. XIL