Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/51

 shoes with spikes in them in ascending the hills,—'and all along the hills hewed down the woods, at the same time, along with Yî, showing the people how to get flesh to eat,'—that is, by capturing fish and birds and beasts. 'I opened passages for the streams throughout the nine provinces, and conducted them to the sea. I deepened the channels and canals, and conducted them to the streams, at the same time, along with Kî, sowing grain, and showing the people how to procure the food of toil in addition to flesh meat. I urged them to exchange what they had for what they had not, and to dispose of their accumulated stores. In this way all the people got grain to eat, and the myriad regions began to come under good rule.' And again:—'When I married in Tû-shan, I remained with my wife only four days.' Mencius says that while engaged on his task, he thrice passed the door of his house, but did not enter it. His own words are:—'When Khî (my son) was wailing and weeping, I did not regard him, but kept planning with all my might my labour on the land.'

Along with his operations to assuage the wide-spread inundation, Yü thus carried on other most important labours proper to an incipient civilization. We gather from the Shû that it did not take him many years to accomplish his mighty undertaking. It was successfully finished before the death of Yâo. All this is incredible. The younger Biot, in an article on the Tribute of Yü, published in the Journal Asiatique, in 1842, says:—'If we are to believe the commentators, Yü will become a supernatural being, who could lead the immense rivers of China as if he had been engaged in regulating the course of feeble streamlets.' There is no occasion to say, 'If we are to believe the commentators;'—if we are to believe the Shû, this is the judgment that we must form about Yü.

The general conclusion to which Biot came about the document under our notice was that we are to find in it only the progress of a great colony. Yü was the first explorer of the Chinese world. He established posts of colonists or planters in different parts of the territory. He caused the wood around those posts to be cut down, [1]