Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/86

 pampering and indulgent system which was attended by the most pernicious results. Not only were the horses themselves demoralised, but the people were actually impoverished by the enormous levies laid upon the land for the fodder necessary to their maintenance; insomuch that a certain scholar is said to have frankly told the Emperor that, for his part, he would far sooner be a viceroy's horse than a viceroy's secretary. Nor was this all: the unwholesome luxury in which the horses were reared, and the vast numbers of them which were appropriated to the imperial use, resulted first in the degeneracy of the breed, and then in an alarming mortality. So serious was the mischief which had taken place during the dynasty of Han, that when Kao Tsu, the first T'ang Emperor, ascended the throne, it was found that the entire cavalry of China consisted but of five thousand horses, all told. When he died he left his successor in a position to collect seven hundred thousand from the different provinces of his realm; and before long the stock of horses had so much increased that it was said they were actually more numerous than all the camels, sheep, and cattle in the land. Then the old abuses gradually crept back; corruption became rife in those departments of state to which was confided the care and maintenance of the Government studs; epidemics broke out among the animals; and when, at the close of the thirteenth century, the dynasty of Sung was overthrown by the Mongol hordes, the supply was found entirely inadequate to resist the charge of the invading cavalry. It was the horses of the Mongols which conquered China; but so badly did the humid atmosphere suit the animals themselves, and so widespread was the corruption