Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/22

 famous as miners, their workings can still be seen in extra-mural Chihli; and so well-known was their quest for the precious metals that Kheraded-Bey, an Arabian traveller of the eighth century, described Silla (Korea) as being rich in gold.

It was the first of the four Manchurian-Mongolian races, who successfully conquered North China and established dynasties, who broke Korea's land-contact with the Chinese. The Kitan Tartars in the year 1012 took the Liaotung peninsula and all the territory west of the Yalu River, driving the Koreans back into their original abode. The present boundaries of Korea were therefore fixed more than nine hundred years ago. The Kitans, who soon penetrated into North China, handed on their sovereignty to another Tartar tribe, the Chin Tartars, who were just as short-lived but established themselves firmly north of the Yellow River. Then came the Mongol or Yuan dynasty; and when this dynasty was finally expelled by the Mings in the fourteenth century, the Chinese colonization of Manchuria was greatly developed, with the transference of the national capital from Nanking back to Peking (1412). Just as Chihli and the Mongolian border-lands had been settled in previ-