enemy and the ancestors of Attila's Huns.
Even though the details of these legendary accounts may deserve little
confidence, there must have been an old tradition that a nation called
the Hun-yue, occupying the northern confines of China, were the ancestors
of the Hiung-nu tribes, well known in historical times, a scion of whose
great khans settled in territory belonging to the king of Sogdiana
during the first century B.C., levied tribute from his neighbours, the
Alans, and with his small but warlike horde initiated that era of
migrations which led to the overrunning of Europe with Central-Asiatic
Tatars.

Fu-hi, Shoen-nung and Huang-ti represent a group of rulers comprised by
the Chinese under the name of _San-huang_, i.e. "The Three Emperors."
Although we have no reason to deny their existence, the details recorded
concerning them contain enough in the way of improbabilities to justify
us in considering them as mythical creations. The chronology, too, is
apparently quite fictitious; for the time allotted to their reigns is
much too long as a term of government for a single human life, and, on
the other hand, much too short, if we measure it by the cultural
progress said to have been brought about in it. Fu-hi's period of
hunting life must have lasted many generations before it led to the
agricultural period represented by the name Shoen-nung; and this period
in turn could not possibly have led within a little more than one
hundred years to the enormous progress ascribed to Huang-ti. Under the
latter ruler a regular board of historians is said to have been
organized with Ts'ang-kie as president, who is known also as Shi-huang,
i.e. "the Emperor of Historians," the reputed inventor of hieroglyphic
writing placed by some authors into the Fu-hi period and worshipped as
Tz'i-shoen, i.e. "God of writing," to the present day. Huang-ti is
supposed to have been the first builder of temples, houses and cities;
to have regulated the calendar, to which he added the intercalary month;
and to have devised means of traffic by cars drawn by oxen and by boats
to ply on the lakes and rivers of his empire. His wife, known as "the
lady of Si-ling," is credited with the invention of the several
manipulations in the rearing of silkworms and the manufacture of silk.
The invention of certain flutes, combined to form a kind of reed organ,
led to a deeper study of music; and in order to construct these
instruments with the necessary accuracy