Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/147

ORIGIN OF COREA. 123 present Manchu Government shows the rank of its various- civil officials bj the figure of a large bird sewed in gold on both back and front of their outer robe ; while the rank of a militaiy officer is indicated by the figure of a beast sewed in the same manner. This peculiarly Manchu custom may possibly be connected with the ancient Fooyii customs. Fooyii produced all kinds of grain, and pulse was universally used Their capital horses were widely famed and very numerous. Strange that the horses of its eastern neighbour should be so extremely diminutive. Every wealthy man had horses> oxen and dogs. Crimson jade was found in its borders, with pearls as large as a small gooseberry, and the finest sable was trapped in its wide forests. Pearls are found no further south than the Songari, after its junction with the Nonni ; the sables found anywhere south of Sanhing are regarded as inferior, the best coming from the neighbourhood of the .Usuri. The northern bounds of Fooyii can thus be determined. Its lands were then, as often since, better cultivated than they are now, — but promise soon to be again, if a life and death struggle for empire in China does not stop the tide of immigration, which is fast opening up an abundant food supply in the fertile plains and vallies on both banks of the Songari, to the overflowing population of the northern Chinese provinces. The people of China must, therefore, have considered Fooyii a civilized people, as compared with its neighbours, especially with YUow, the ancestors of tibe present ruling dynasty of China, whose people wore only a piece of cotton, about a foot square, on the loins, one before and one behind. In the wane of the Han dynasty, Fooyii was in the zenith of its power, Tilow being it» tributary. Had the Chinese made Fooyii the scene of the civiliz- ing influence of Elitsu, it would have been apparently more justifiable than placing him in Chaosien. Such was the kingdom, a few families of which, moving south, laid the foundations of the kingdom of Gaogowli, sometime before the beginning of the Christian era. It received that name from