known.  About sixty years previously, under the reign of K`ang Hsi, the Jesuits had carried out extensive surveys, and had drawn fairly accurate maps of Chinese territory, which had been sent to Paris and there engraved on copper by order of Louis XIV.  In like manner, the pictures now in question were forwarded to Paris and engraved, between 1769 and 1774, by skilled draughtsmen, as may be gathered from the lettering at the foot of each; for instance—­Grave par J. P. Le Bas, graveur du cabinet du roi (Cambridge University Library).

Kuldja and Kashgaria were next added to the empire, and Manchu supremacy was established in Tibet.  Burma and Nepal were forced to pay tribute, after a disastrous war (1766-1770) with the former country, in which a Chinese army had been almost exterminated; rebellions in Ss{u}ch`uan (1770), Shantung (1777), and Formosa (1786) were suppressed.

Early in the eighteenth century, the Turguts, a branch of the Kalmuck Tartars, unable to endure the oppressive tyranny of their rulers, trekked into Russia, and settled on the banks of the Volga.  Some seventy years later, once more finding the burden of taxation too heavy, they again organized a trek upon a colossal scale.  Turning their faces eastward, they spent a whole year of fearful suffering and privation in reaching the confines of Ili, a terribly diminished host.  There they received a district, and were placed under the jurisdiction of a khan.  This journey has been dramatically described by De Quincey in an essay entitled “Revolt of the Tartars, or Flight of the Kalmuck Khan and his people from the Russian territories to the Frontiers of China.”  Of this contribution to literature it is only necessary to remark that the scenes described, and especially the numbers mentioned, must be credited chiefly to the perfervid imagination of the essayist, and also to certain not very trustworthy documents sent home by Pere Amiot.  It is probable that about one hundred and sixty thousand Turguts set out on that long march, of whom only some seventy thousand reached their goal.

In 1781, the Dungans (or Tungans) of Shensi broke into open rebellion, which was suppressed only after huge losses to the Imperialists.  These Dungans were Mahometan subjects of China, who in very early times had colonized, under the name of Gao-tchan, in Kansuh and Shensi, and subsequently spread westward into Turkestan.  Some say that they were a distinct race, who, in the fifth and sixth centuries, occupied the Tian Shan range, with their capital at Harashar.  The name, however, means, in the dialect of Chinese Tartary, “converts,” that is, to Mahometanism, to which they were converted in the days of Timour by an Arabian adventurer.  We shall hear of them again in a still more serious connexion.