rtune, probably an inundation of the Yellow
river such as has been witnessed by the present generation. Its
horrors are described with poetical exaggeration in the _Shu-king_.
When the efforts to stop the floods had proved futile for nine years,
Yau wished to abdicate, and he selected a virtuous young man of the
name of Shun as his successor. Among the legends told about this
second model emperor is the story that he had a board before his
palace on which every subject was permitted to note whatever faults he
had to find with his government, and that by means of a drum suspended
at his palace gate attention might be drawn to any complaint that was
to be made to him. Since Kun had not succeeded in stopping the floods,
he was dismissed and his son Yue was appointed in his stead. Probably
the waters began to subside of their own accord, but Yue has been
praised up as the national hero who, by his engineering works, saved
his people from utter destruction. His labours in this direction are
described in a special section of the Confucian account known as
_Yue-kung_, i.e. "Tribute of Yue." Yue's merit has in the sequel been
exaggerated so as to credit him with more than human powers. He is
supposed to have cut canals through the hills, in order to furnish
outlets to the floods, and to have performed feats of engineering
compared to which, according to Von Richthofen, the construction of
the St Gotthard tunnel without blasting materials would be child's
play, and all this within a few years.

_The Hia Dynasty._--As a reward for his services Yue was selected to
succeed Shun as emperor. He divided the empire into nine provinces, the
description of which in the _Yue-kung_ chapter of the "Canon of History"
bears a suspicious resemblance to later accounts. Yue's reign has been
assigned to the years 2205-2198, and the Hia Dynasty, of which he became
the head, has been made to extend to the overthrow in 1766 B.C. of Kie,
its eighteenth and last emperor, a cruel tyrant of the most vicious and
contemptible character. Among the Hia emperors we find _Chung-k'ang_
(2159-2147), whose reign has attracted the attention of European
scholars by the mention of an eclipse of the sun, which his court
astronomers had failed to predict. European astronomers and sinologues
have brought much acumen to bear on the problem involved in the
_Shu-king_ account in trying to decide which of the several eclipses
kn