524 Voyage of the Novara. 



was born in 1813, in a village near Canton, and while yet in 

 his early youth was, in consequence of his precocity, removed 

 from tending his father's flocks to be a scholar in the village, 

 where he pursued his studies with such zeal, that a year later 

 he took several degrees as a teacher. On one of his visits to 

 Canton, he made the acquaintance of a Protestant missionary, 

 with whom he long corresponded, and from whom he re- 

 ceived a variety of tracts translated into Chinese, and books, 

 by way of presents. In the course of a serious illness with 

 which he was assailed about this period, he had numerous 

 visions, and is said in his delirium to have insisted on being 

 hailed Emperor of China. Gradually Hung and his friend 

 and zealous adherent Fung- Yun -San became, through erro- 

 neous or wilful misinterpretation of the works of various 

 missionary societies, the founders of a new creed, a sort of 

 free, semi- Christian sect, which, as it could not long subsist 

 without coming into collision with the reigning Government, 

 very speedily assumed a political character. It is an in- 

 dubitable fact that at first the religious movement was sup- 

 ported by the Protestant missionaries, and the views of its 

 founders forwarded by every means in their power, with the 

 object of using it to prepare the soil for the promulgation 

 of Christianity. When about entering his forty-first year. 

 Hung formed an alliance with American missionaries sta- 

 tioned at Canton, studied their books, after which he returned 

 to t]ie province of Kuang-si, where he published writings 

 descriptive of the alleged manifestations of the Deity, gave 



