Russia. Ta Lien Wan bay, in rear of Port Arthur, we had arranged with the Chinese to make an open port; the Russians seize it, and no British subject can now land there without a Russian passport. When the new Russian navigation laws come into force next year, no British ships will be allowed to carry goods between two Russian ports; hence British steamers will no longer be able to carry kerosene oil from Batoum to ports in China occupied by Russia. The import of kerosene oil into China is a large and increasing trade; it is taking the place of all other illuminants throughout China, and forms a great field for our carrying trade, which our Government should have carefully safeguarded.

Having let things drift in this way, the question now is, What can we do to recover the lost ground? Many politicians appear to think that we should quietly accept the inevitable. Russia is bound to annex Northern China, and we must make the best of it, i.e., we must abandon the policy of the "open door," and look for compensation elsewhere. Thus we fall back on spheres of influence," and so have indirectly marked out the Yangtse valley as our sphere. But our Government does not appear to be prepared to ear-mark this region in any way. Russia has invaded this sphere likewise; she has compelled the Chinese to give her a separate special concession in Hankow, and, together with France, is now in occupation of land there for which British subjects hold the title-deeds, and to which, by registry in the British Consulate Land Register years ago, they fondly imagined themselves to hold a clear title. The Lu-han railway, from Hankow to Tientsin, is now being built by a nominally Belgian syndicate financed by the Russo-Chinese Bank, while the nominally British, but really cosmopolitan, Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation is prohibited by the Russians from holding a lien on the new railway to the treaty port of Newchang, for which they have advanced the funds to the Chinese Govern

ment.

These and many other encroachments on our influence in

China, which I have not space to describe, testify to the fact that, if we continue to sit idle and to drift, our opportunities for trade with the largest potential market in the world will be still more seriously curtailed. Between the two stools of the "open door" and "spheres of influence," we are bound to fall to the ground if we do not bestir ourselves; and our Government should declare openly for one policy or the other, and then support the one selected with untiring determination. The open door all round is a true, clear policy; it is humane, just to the Chinese, and in the interest of every nation that seeks trade and intercourse with the Chinese, with no ulterior motives of preferential advantages for itself. The nations who now hold the lion's share of the China trade are deeply interested in upholding the status quo, and it ought not to be beyond the powers of diplomacy to bring about an agreement between them to resist further aggression upon China, and to compel the Russians to keep the door open, even in Manchuria, on the terms of our treaties with China. A joint protectorate by these nations, not a political interference, but an assurance against outside aggression, should meet the case if it can be brought about. China has the seeds of reform in herself, and, if given time and an assurance of protection, will surely, if slowly, bring them to maturity; and the wise policy is to help her to reform herself-analogous to the policy Sir Harry Parkes was allowed to pursue in Japan. But if, on the other hand, all other European nations have determined to partition China, and our pacific remonstrances are of no avail, then, I take it, it is the duty of the Government to see that Britain takes the lion's share, if only as a stake and means of bargain for the open door with rival Powers, and, farther, as a means of training the Chinese and enabling them later on to undertake their own selfdefence. Continuous attention, to ensure which a special Far East Department should be organized, appears to me the only sure means by which either of the above ends can be satisfactorily accomplished.

NEPAUL AND CHINA.

By E. H. PARKER.

PERHAPS there is no point in Far Eastern history more obscure than the origin of the existing relations between China and Nepaul, and as Great Britain is both historically and politically concerned in the matter it may be of interest to explain it.

It is quite certain that 1,100 years ago the T'ang dynasty in its intercourse with early Tibet had a fairly accurate notion where Nepaul was; and indeed it is mentioned by that name, Nibal, or, as it now appears under conditions of modern phonetic decay, Ni-p'o-lo. But at that time numerous Chinese pilgrims had wandered extensively all over the Pamirs, India, and the countries of the southern seas; and besides this, the Imperial government for some centuries received mercantile or tribute missions from most of the Asiatic states, even as far as Arabia: indeed, Siberia and parts of Asia Minor were the only regions not included within the political system which had its centre at Si-ngan Fu. But although Chinese history alone is sufficient to trace for us retrospectively the course of change, dynasty by dynasty, yet the connecting clues are severed so far as the average native reader is concerned, and there is the same fogginess in the Chinese mind touching the Decline and Fall of the Celestial Empire as there was in the European mind, previous to the works of Gibbon and Niebuhr, touching the influence of Rome upon northern and western Europe. China had to struggle with Turks, Tibetans, and Tunguses; just as Rome had to fight for her life against Goths, Vandals, and Gauls. The Huns, in fact, were a connecting link between the great imperial system of the Far East and the great imperial system of the Far West. Though we are unable as yet to say with precision through what tribes Attila and his hordes had

been in touch with the nomads who had harassed China a few decades earlier, it is quite certain from the description given in Greek, Persian, and Chinese history that warlike aggregations of horsemen possessing identical customs and manners swooped down upon the settled empires of the temperate zone all along the line from the Pacific to the Atlantic; sometimes raiding; sometimes appropriating and governing territory; and sometimes merging or being merged into the more civilised conquered peoples. Thus China has her Dark Ages and Middle Ages just as we have in Europe; and history repeats itself, or runs in duplicate lines, from east to west or from west to east, alternately.

In this way it happens that. a vast unexplored chasm separates in the Chinese mind the people of a thousand years back from the same people of to-day. It was a great surprise when the Nestorian stone found 250 years ago at Si-ngan Fu made it plain to the literati that the Christianity of the 17th century was immediately linked with that of the 7th. The connecting historical links of Corea, Japan, and Annam, all in close touch with China, have, if occasionally weakened, never been severed in quite the same way. In the case of India, Ceylon, Arabia, Nepaul, Java, Siam, and even Burma, countries may be said to have reappeared in unfamiliar shape, after a long lapse of oblivion, without there being anything on the surface to connect them with the same countries as they were under different names a millennium ago. In each instance the degree of oblivion. may vary; but, speaking broadly, it can be said that the subtle connecting links supplied by Chinese history are not obvious except to native specialists; and of Chinese specialists in the science of true history, as distinct from the rule-of-thumb recording of facts and dates, the number is and always has been extremely limited.

It is not proposed therefore now to connect the Nibal of the 8th century with the Palpa of the 18th. To do that satisfactorily would be a dry and thankless task, even if it

THIRD SERIES. VOL. VII.

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were possible with the incomplete materials at present at hand but I hope to do it soon; and meanwhile the considerations above set forth explain how it was that, shortly after the reigning Manchu dynasty had established its supervisory system over Tibet, the Resident reported to Peking the desire of the "Three Khans beyond Tibet to send tribute. This was in 1732; and the Emperor, in view of the fact that a journey to and fro must occupy two years, directed that the envoys should settle their business in Tibet. Seven years later the Resident reported that the three Palpa Khans were at war, but that the measures taken by the native military authorities of Tibet to restore harmony showed every prospect of success.

The territorial titles of the three Palpa Khans are not consistently written, but the well-known fact that there were three rajas at Bhaktapur (or Bhatgaon); Kantipur (or Khātmāndu); and Lalitapur (or Patn); and that there had been such ever since the middle of the 15th century, proves the Chinese story to be so far true. One of the rajas is called the Khan of Ya-mu-pu, or Yen-pu: as the Chinese later on invariably style the Goorkha capital of Khātmāndū by the name Yang-pu, it is clear that this name must be taken from Swa-yambu, a village and temple lying 3,000 yards west of the present capital, and according to Dr. Wright already much frequented by the Bhotiyas before the Goorkhas built the modern Khātmāndū. In fact the Chinese tell us that

"the Tanguts go on an annual pilgrimage to the temple of Yang-pu, the capital, in order to smear themselves with white earth."

The other two Khans were those of K'u-k'u-mu (? Kukum) and Ye-lêng (? Yereng); but how these two names are to be squared with the Newar capital of Patn, and with Bhatgaon, it is for local specialists to decide. The Chinese word Pa-lê-pu is manifestly intended for Palpa, for the Palpa rajas are known to have reigned from about the 14th century; and Abbé Huc informs us that the Nepaulese merchants at Lhasa were called Pe-bun, which corresponds