Page:The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey.djvu/323



two characters as now written mean precious or honourable land, but as originally written the character Kwei meant "demon" or "devil," and the two characters meant the "Land of Demons." The inhabitants were called Lo-sï Kwei or Lo-sï demons, which probably refers to the spiral form in which they did up their hair. This was about two thousand years ago.

The province of is in West or West Central China. It contains about 60,000 square miles, and the population is variously estimated at from five to eleven millions. Probably the population is about seven millions.

At the present time there are five different races found in the province. These are the Keh-lao, Lo-lo, Miao, Chung-chia, and Chinese. The languages spoken by these communities are all monosyllabic, but a comparison of their vocabularies reveals so few resemblances as to entitle them to be called different languages. Among the five it seems to us the greatest resemblance can be traced between the Chinese and Miao. Naturally in all these languages there are words borrowed from the Chinese.

Of the Keh-lao there are, so far as we know, only a few small villages in the neighbourhood of Anshuen Fu. These people claim to be the original inhabitants of the land, and it is worthy of note that while the Chinese regard the Miao as the original occupants of the land, and in some places the Miao claim to be so, yet in the