century
the Chinese learned the situation of the great peninsula Aliaska, which
they named Tahan, or Great China. Beyond this, at the end of the fifth
century,--be it observed that the advances in discovery correspond in
time in the records,--they discovered a land which Deguignes long after
identified with the north-west coast of America. With each discovery,
the people of these new lands were compelled, or were represented at
court as having been compelled, to send ambassadors wife tribute to the
Central Realm, or China.

But there had been unofficial Chinese travelers in Western America, and
even in Mexico itself, before this time. Those who have examined the
history of that vast religious movement of Asia which, contemporary with
Christianity, shook the hoary faiths of the East, while a higher and
purer doctrine was overturning those of the West, are aware that it had
many external points or forms in common with those of the later Roman
church, which have long been a puzzle to the wise. To say nothing of
mitres, tapers, violet robes, rosaries, bells, convents, auricular
confession, and many other singular identities, the early Buddhist
church distinguished itself by a truly catholic zeal for the making of
converts, and, to effect this, sent its emissaries to Central Africa and
Central Russia; from the Sclavonian frontier on the west to China,
Japan, and the farthest Russian isles of the east. On they went; who
shall say where they paused? We know that there are at this day in St.
Petersburg certain books on black paper taken from a Buddhist temple
found in a remote northern corner of Russia. It was much less of an
undertaking, and much less singular, that Chinese priests should pass,
by short voyages, from island to island, almost over the proposed
Russian route for the Pacific telegraph to America. That they _did so_
is explicitly stated in the Year Books, which contain details relative
to _Fusang_, or Mexico, where it is said of the inhabitants that 'in
earlier times these people lived not according to the laws of Buddha.
But it happened in the second "year-naming" "Great Light" of Song (A.D.
458), that five beggar monks, from the kingdom Kipin, went to this land,
extended over it the religion of Buddha, and with it his holy writings
and images. They instructed the people in the principles of monastic
life, and so changed their manners.'

But I am anticipating my subject. In another chapter I propose, on the
au