ment; the rails were torn up and sent to Formosa, where they were left to rot upon the sea-beach.
The suppression of rebellion in Turkestan and Yünnan has already been mentioned; also the retrocession of Kuldja, which brings us down to the year 1881, when the Eastern Empress died. Death must have been more or less a relief to this colourless personage, who had been entirely superseded on a stage on which by rights she should have played the leading part, and who had been terrorized during her last years by her more masterful colleague.
In 1882 there were difficulties with France over Tongking; these, however, were adjusted, and in 1884 a convention was signed by Captain Fournier and Li Hung-chang. A further dispute then arose as to a breach of the convention by the Chinese, and an état de représailles followed, during which the French destroyed the Chinese fleet. After the peace which was arranged in 1885, a few years of comparative tranquillity ensued; the Emperor was married (1889), and relieved his aunt of her duties as Regent.
Japan, in earlier centuries contemptuously styled the Dwarf-nation, and always despised as a mere imitator and brain-picker of Chinese wisdom, now swims definitively into the ken of the Manchu court. The Formosan imbroglio had been forgotten as soon as it was over, and the recent rapid progress of Japan
