s; old and young were employed in transporting food,
production was almost at a standstill, and money was scarce. The
Son of Heaven had not even carriage horses of the same color;
the highest civil and military authorities rode in bullock carts;
the people at large knew not where to lay their heads. The
coinage was so heavy and cumbersome that the people themselves
started a new issue at a fixed standard of value. But the laws
were lax, and it was impossible to prevent the grasping from
coining largely, buying largely, and then holding for a rise in
the market. Prices went up enormously:"--it sounds quite modern
and civilized, doesn't it?--"rice sold at a thousand cash per
picul; a horse cost a hundred ounces of silver."

------
* The passages quoted are taken from Dr. Giles's work on
_Chinese Literature._
------

Under the Empress Liu Chi and her successors these conditions
were bettered; until, when a half cycle had run its course, and
Han Wuti had been some twenty years on the throne, prosperity
came to a culmination. Says Ssema Tsien:

"The public granaries were well-stocked; the government
treasuries full... The streets were thronged with the horses of
the people, and on the highroads, whole droves were to be seen,
so that it became necessary to forbid the public use of mares.
Village elders ate meat and drank wine. Petty government
clerkships lapsed from father to son, and the higher offices of
state were treated as family heirlooms. For a spirit of
self-respect and reverence for the law had gone abroad, and a
sense of charity and duty towards one's neighbor kept men
aloof from disgrace and crime."

There had been in Kansuh, the north-westernmost province of China
Proper, a people called the Yueh Chi or White Scythians, whom the
Huns had driven into the far west; by this time they were
carving themselves an empire out of the domains of the Parthians,
and penetrating into north-west India, but Han Wuti knew nothing
of that. All that was known of them was, that somewhere on the
limits of the world they existed, and were likely to be still at
loggerheads with their ancient foes the Huns. Han Wuti had now
been on the throne seven years, and was and had been much
troubled by the Hun problem: he thought it might help to solve
it if those lost Yueh Chi could be raked up out of the unknown
and made active allies. To show the spirit of the age, I will
tell you the story of Chang Ch'ien, the general whom