enduring loyalty or unite the diverse desires of different sections. Under the apathy that ensued after this bitter experience the Manchus very prudently encouraged reconstruction by appointing Chinese officials chosen according to the ancient tests throughout the empire, and China returned sensibly though sullenly to her age-old life of toil under her new masters. Ten years before this date Dorgun the Regent had died, leaving Shunchi to direct the imperial policy in person at the age of twelve. We do not hear much of his intellectual endowments, but he had been nurtured in a household of sturdy kinsmen and he must have matured early to have employed his talents successfully at this age. He did in 1661 in his twenty-fourth year, leaving the empire to a son eight years old whose reign name Kanghsi is one of the most brilliant in Chinese history.

The Manchus were not ungrateful to the Chinese generals who had enabled them to win an empire. Wu Sankwei, whose pursuit of the Kwei Wang had completed the crowning performance of that great conquest, was given the title of prince and made absolute lord of the two provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow, with his own army and entire control of the civil appointments and revenues of the territory. Two other generals, both Liaotung men, were in like manner created princes of the maritime provinces of Kwangtung and Fuhkien, from which, as from Wu's domain, all the Manchu soldiery was withdrawn. Judged by the event this method of rewarding their services seems imprudent, but amid the multitude of traitors that must have made China appear to these Tartars as infected with perjury, these men had resisted the temptations to which others had succumbed and remained loyal to the end. Their honors were awarded in proportion to the magnitude of their efforts. But Prince Wu, either because he wearied of his sovereign state in a remote province, or because he was apprehensive of the imperial plans to reduce his army, after accumulating stores and revenues revolted in 1674, soon after the young Kanghsi had assumed control of the gov ernment. With him arose also the Prince Kung of Fuhkien;

and in a few weeks the empire was once more ablaze with insurrection, officials everywhere surrendering their cities and the people gladly removing their queues. Six provinces turned against their Manchu masters; a seventh, Kwangtung, remained neutral because its old Prince, Shang Ko-si was loyal, but his son Chu-sin, a drunkard, accepted the title of Great Commander from Wu, assumed the old Chinese headdress and made his aged father a prisoner. The latter died in 1676, and Chu-sin, rather alarmed at Wu's attitude toward him, made his peace with Kanghsi. The other rebel prince (of Fuhkien) after some serious fighting, was pardoned and re-employed by the Manchus in 1677, but was subsequently executed in Peking, a fitting end for his cruelty and crimes. The defection of these coast provinces, though badly led, was heartily endorsed by their inhabitants whose hatred of the Manchus has never much abated, and a considerable Manchu army had to be employed in bringing them to order. Wu San-kwei raged up and down the western provinces, where his armies at one time had possession of Shensi and even threatened Peking. So long as he lived there seemed to be a magic in the old warrior's name that paralyzed the troops brought against him. All his campaigning was carried on in the enemy's country, and though he was presently driven out of Shensi and the two Kwang, he died holding his own in Hunan, while none dared to attack his base in the southwest. During four years this indefatigable fighter had wrenched nearly half of China from Manchu control and maintained his upstart government upon the resources of the least productive portion of the empire. Kanghsi, who inherited the physical vigor of his great ancestors, was with difficulty dissuaded from taking charge of the campaign against this formidable rival in person. His counsellors were probably justified in their fears of losing Peking in an émeute if he left the capital, but his resolution in the crisis and the resources at his command-chiefly in the better fighting qualities of the Mongols and northern Chinese troops-eventually achieved a hard-earned victory over all his foes in 1681. Wu had succumbed to an illness in 1678; his grandson and

successor, Shu-fan, was beheaded upon the fall of his capital Yunnan, and his head hung upon one of the city gates of Peking. The rebellion had failed, and the emperor could congratulate himself that he had accomplished what was necessary for establishing his autocracy, the disarming of the vassal princes. So long as they retained their hereditary powers the Manchu was little more than the feudal suzerain of China. Their revolt was a declaration of the right of the Chinese to rule themselves, and in this sense these eight years were the concluding act in the bloody drama begun in 1644. To insure the future Kanghsi abolished the title of Wang except as bestowed upon members of the imperial clan, nor was it made hereditary even amongst these.

In the settlement of the country Manchu troops were quartered in permanent garrisons in a score of the more important cities of the empire. These "bannermen" were forbidden to intermarry with the Chinese or to engage in any occupation except that of arms. So long as these warriors were regularly exercised in their profession under the great military emperors, chasing bandits or campaigning in Central Asia, they remained a valid defence to the throne. But they never constituted an important element in the forces of the empire.1 In later times, becoming utterly demoralized through inaction, compelled to remain aliens in spirit as well as in race to the industrious Chinese who surrounded them and to whom they represented the yoke of a foreign master, they sank into forlorn and useless drones whose descendants were the first victims of the Chinese revolution of 1911. This was Kanghsi's reply to the intransigeants of China. He was logical, perhaps, but time, a profounder logician, proved it to be fallacious. The conquest had not in reality been effected by Manchu braves or even by Manchu wisdom, nor could the Manchus ever retain their hold upon China merely by the valor of their men. Their at

'In Chienlung's reign there were 45,500 Manchu bannermen disposed in twenty towns of China Proper, 8,750 near Peking and 15,000 in eight garrisons in Turkestan, besides about 100,000 guarding the imperial palace. The total Chinese army was 662,000, besides 700,000 provincial troops.

tack was begun at an opportune moment, when a long period of Ming misrule and her reduced vitality had so distracted China as to admit of her capital being taken by a coup de main. The importance of Nurhachu's work of training and preparation was fully revealed in this initial success and in the admirable temper of his successors, as they employed all the factors in their favor while pushing the conquest through to an end. But these factors were for the most part Chinese: the hopeless incapacity of the Ming pretenders, the willingness of the Chinese to fight for the foreigners, the schisms that separated north from south, faction from faction, province from province, the indomitable fortitude of a courageous people when once enlisted in their cause. It was the Chinese themselves who completed the conquest of China for the Manchus; it was the Chinese who suffered them to rule because they adopted their culture and institutions and took the natives into partnership in the management of the empire. No disposition of Manchu garrisons at strategic centers could have long upheld that rule or prevented insurrections had the Tartars departed from their policy and managed their great estate selfishly. And who shall say that those who, for fear or favor, cast their lot with the Manchus decided unwisely for their country? The sovereigns of China never had a broader sense of empire or a clearer idea of the physical confines and defences of that empire than under Kanghsi, the greatest of her modern emperors, whose expansion of her boundaries and increase of her prestige made her a greater power than ever before and strong enough to save her from subjugation by the predatory states of a newly awakened Europe.

NEGRO SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS IN WEST AFRICA

By George W. Ellis, K.C., F.R.G.S.

Fundamentally, the aboriginal social institutions of the African tribes are substantially the same throughout the African Black Belt. An examination of the institutions of any single tribe will therefore give the social key to the African social situation. And for this purpose a representative ethnic group is selected from the peoples which now fringe the western border of the great African Sudan, commonly called the Vais.

The Vai tribe is one of the most interesting tribes in all Africa. It would be interesting if for no other reason than that, of the millions of Negroes of innumerable tribes, it has the distinction of being the only one which has its own invented national orthography.'

Ethnologically, the Vais belong to the Mánde branch of the Negro race. They are very closely related to the Soso, Bambara, Mendi, Cossa and Mandingo peoples, and like them speak a branch of the Mánde tongue. This family of the Negro race occupies the western part of High Sudan between the eighth and sixteenth degrees of northern latitude, extending as far east as Timbuctu. Between Senegambia and Cape Palmas, a narrow strip of lowland separates High Sudan from the Atlantic. The Mánde3 family extends into this lowland only at two points, one in the Mánde territory, the other in the country of the Vais. The tribes of this lowland speak varied languages, entirely different from the Mánde, among which may be mentioned the Basá, Kpwesi, Kirim, Nalu, Fúlup, Tímne, Baga, Balánta, Búlom and others.

1 Outlines of a Vai Grammar, etc., by S. W. Koelle, 11, London, 1854. 2 Races of Man, etc., Peschel, p. 466, London, 1876.

Mande and Mandingo from same root manatus, meaning a fish god, a creature worshiped by the people of Songhay tribe, Binger; also Affairs of West Africa, p. 211, Morell.

Generally spelled Pessey. This spelling according to system adopted in London for spelling African names: Liberia, Geographical Journal for August, 1905 by Sir Harry H. Johnston, K.C.M.G., K.C.B.