304 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



part in the i2th century B.C., when the peninsula was already 

 occupied, as it still is, by Mongols, the Sien-pi, in the north, and 

 in the south by several branches of the Hans (San- San), of whom 

 it is recorded that they spoke a language unintelligible to the 

 Sien-pi, and resembled the Japanese in appearance, manners, and 

 customs. From this it may be inferred that the Hans were the 

 true aborigines, probably direct descendants of the Caucasic 

 peoples of the New Stone Age, while the Sien-pi were Mongolic 

 (Tungusic) intruders from the present Manchuria. For some 

 time these Sien-pi played a leading part in the political convul- 

 sions prior and subsequent to the erection of the Great Wall by 

 Shih Hwang Ti, founder of the Tsin dynasty (221-209 B.C.) 1 . 

 Soon after the completion of this barrier, the Hiung-nu, no longer 

 able to scour the fertile plains of the Middle Kingdom, turned 

 their arms against the neighbouring Yue-cJii, whom they drove 

 westwards to the Zungarian valleys. Here they were soon dis- 

 placed by the Usuns ( Wu-suji), a fair, blue-eyed people of 

 unknown origin, who have been called "Aryans," and even 

 "Teutons," and whom Ch. de Ujfalvy identifies with the tall 

 long-headed western blonds (de Lapouge's Homo Europceus), 

 mixed with brown round-headed hordes of white complexion 2 . 



1 This stupendous work, on which about 1,000,000 hands are said to have 

 been engaged for five years, possesses great ethnical as well as political import- 

 ance. Running for over 1500 miles across hills, valleys, and rivers along the 

 northern frontier of China proper, it long arrested the southern movements of 

 the restless Mongolo-Turki hordes, and thus gave a westerly direction to their 

 incursions many centuries before the great invasions of Jenghiz-Khan and his 

 successors. It is strange to reflect that the ethnological relations were thus 

 profoundly disturbed throughout the eastern hemisphere by the work of a 

 ruthless despot who reigned only twelve years, and in that time waged war 

 against all the best traditions of the empire, destroying the books of Confucius 

 and the other sages, and burying alive 460 men of letters for their efforts to 

 rescue those writings from total extinction. 



2 Les Aryens au Nord et an Slid de F Hindou-KoucJi, 1896, p. 25. This 

 writer does not think that the Usuns should be identified with the tall race of 

 horse-like face, large nose, and deep-set eyes mentioned in the early Chinese 

 records, because no reference is made to "blue eyes," which would not have 

 been omitted had they existed. But, if I remember, "green eyes" are spoken 

 of, and we know that none of the early writers use colour terms with strict 

 accuracy. 



