dream of the emperor
Ming of Han(12) had its proper cause."

NOTES

(1) The Sindhu. We saw in a former note that the earliest name in
China for India was Shin-tuh. So, here, the river Indus is called by a
name approaching that in sound.

(2) Both Beal and Watters quote from Cunningham (Ladak, pp. 88, 89)
the following description of the course of the Indus in these parts,
in striking accordance with our author's account:--"From Skardo to
Rongdo, and from Rongdo to Makpou-i-shang-rong, for upwards of 100
miles, the Indus sweeps sullen and dark through a mighty gorge in
the mountains, which for wild sublimity is perhaps unequalled. Rongdo
means the country of defiles. . . . Between these points the Indus
raves from side to side of the gloomy chasm, foaming and chafing with
ungovernable fury. Yet even in these inaccessible places has daring
and ingenious man triumphed over opposing nature. The yawning abyss
is spanned by frail rope bridges, and the narrow ledges of rocks are
connected by ladders to form a giddy pathway overhanging the seething
cauldron below."

(3) The Japanese edition has a different reading here from the Chinese
copies,--one which Remusat (with true critical instinct) conjectured
should take the place of the more difficult text with which alone he
was acquainted. The "Nine Interpreters" would be a general name for
the official interpreters attached to the invading armies of Han in
their attempts to penetrate and subdue the regions of the west. The
phrase occurs in the memoir of Chang K'een, referred to in the next
note.

(4) Chang K'een, a minister of the emperor Woo of Han (B.C. 140-87),
is celebrated as the first Chinese who "pierced the void," and
penetrated to "the regions of the west," corresponding very much to
the present Turkestan. Through him, by B.C. 115, a regular intercourse
was established between China and the thirty-six kingdoms or states of
that quarter;--see Mayers' Chinese Reader's Manual, p. 5. The memoir
of Chang K'een, translated by Mr. Wylie from the Books of the first
Han dynasty, appears in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute,
referred to already.

(5) Less is known of Kan Ying than of Chang K'een. Being sent in A.D.
88 by his patron Pan Chao on an embassy to the Roman empire, he only
got as far as the Caspian sea, and returned to China. He extended,