Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/263

OBIGJK OF KIN. 239 thus prevent future possible border troubles. The king was a good natured drunkard, and whether or not he would follow the advice next day, no one knows ; but he did not take immediate steps, though that young man, whose name was Agooda, did. For he, fearing the resentment of the king for the insult offered him, made off by night with his followers eastwards across the Songari. The hot blooded young man Agooda had doubtless often brooded over the loss of the large kingdom possessed a century before by his fathers ; and as the king of Liao in his love of drink neglected the defences of his country, Agooda quietly but steadily prepared troops, and while yet a minor, made great changes in the discipline of the army. But to show the extent of these changes, we must go back to the origin of this new power. Among the numerous tribes of Independent or Savage Nujun was one which was located on the banks of the " Poogan river in the province of Wanyen." Hwihanpoo was the first chief of any note there. His grandson, Swiko, the fourth chief, was the first of this new line who paid any attention to tillage. He built a palace and city, and had, therefore, a fixed place of abode on the banks of the Hoorha river. Hence we learn that the ancient civilisation, tillage, cities, palaces and literature of Bohai, had been overturned with the loss of empire ; and that defeat, and perhaps terrible carnage, had driven the Nujun into their primitive nomadic state, whence they began to emerge, when they again became numerous, and when the chase began to yield an insufficient amount of food. Except Corea, all the Mongolic and Tungusic dynasties have gone through these three stages. At first nomadic, they began, as the commencement of an imdreamt of coming greatness, to cultivate the ground, build houses, raise cities surrounded by walls and moats, — ^all of which necessitated a greater or lesser acquaintance with letters. Then war, victory, conquest, and learning rapidly increasing and lavishly patron- ised; — ^to be followed by wars and defeat, when the vices of luxury had made the conquerors incapable of defending the possessions acquired by the hardihood of their primitive life. Defeat drove them in thinned numbers into their primitive wildnesses. Their