Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/29

 MANJOO. 7 Nlijun, or Sooshun, gradually arose, a phceniz out of the burnt out ashes. It followed the track of Bohai, from the northern slopes of Changbaishan and the beautiful wilds of Ninguta, driving the Liao out of Liaotung, then out of China> bearing absolute sway of all China north of the Yellow Biver, and becoming virtually masters of the northern bank of the Yangtsu, dictating for a considerable time its own terms» under the title of Kin or Gold, to the effeminate Sung dynasty. The Mongols, fin)m the north of Shamo, and the north-west of Manchuria, swept with an irresistible flood all Asia, from the sea of Japan to the heart of Bussia, swallowing up the Kin, crushing out the lingering death of the Sung in South China, and setting up the Yuen dynasty. They made Liaoyang the capital of all Manchuria, dividing the country into seven ** Loo " or Circuits. But the Yuen dynasty soon made itself hateful by its vices, and a Chinese monk drove out the Mongols, establishing the Ming dynasty. Liaotung fell with a stroke of his pen. But this Ming dynasty never established its rule in Manchuria further north than Kaiyuen, having to rest content with the lands now shown in maps as enclosed by palisades of wood, which may have at one time existed, and, This dynasty was again displaced by the largest wave of Sooshun adventure ; for it is a petty clan of that widely extended family which has ruled the Chinese world for over two centuries. They sprang from the narrow, beautiful, but savage glens far south-west of Changbaishan and east of Mukden. They are known as the Manchu dynasty — ^the word Manjoo, in their own language, meaning *' Clear,'' as their predecessors were Ming, or " Bright'' This bird's-eye view will help to show the important r61e played by Liaotung, beyond all proportion to its wealth and resources, over the destinies of the great Chinese world; and will explain the chief cause why the author has considered a history of Liaotimg — ^in reality the history of Corea — a necessary prelude to the histoiy of the rise of the present Manchu empire.
 * according to Du Halde, did exist in the seventeenth century.