Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/33

 Chaftkr L CHAOSIEN. That mountaizious peninsula in the north-east of Asia^ west of Japan, and east of Manchuria^ is known to westerns under the name of Corea or Korea» but to the Chinese, whose emperor is liege lord of that kingdom, it is known under the name of Chaosiea* The Coreans themselves employ both names; the official designation being Chaosien, but in common speech the name Gori or Oadi is general The modem name Chaosien is a reyival of the name under which the country was known, in its earliest contact with China. But the Chaosien of those days was not co-extensive with the Chaosien of the present day, for the greater portion of the modern Chaosien extends eastwards £Bur beyond the original Chaosien. But that original Chaosien stretched much further westward than the present, embracing all Liaotung, and, for a time, whose duration is unknown, a great part of Liaosi as well. It stretched east little beyond the Ping or Datonggang river. To its east were many independent tribes, afterwards amalgamated into two kingdoms, those of Baiji and Sinlo. A straight line from £wangning, through Liaoyang to the Yaloo river, would point out the extreme north of Chaosien, and the sea washed all its southern bound& From Chinese histoiy it is impossible to say whence came the inhabitants of Chaosien, for the statement that they are the descendants of Eitsu, brother of Woo Wang, can apply at most only to a line of kings over Chaosien, and not in any way to the people forming his kingdom. The people were there before he went^ and had been there for ages unknown. They were
 * The Chaohkn of Do. Halde, whose brief acoonnt of it is inaceomte. (See Map L)