Bulletin of Catholic University of Peking

50 BULLETIN NUMBER FOUR

Cho Chou San P’o. Showing elaborate terracing of the mountains.

Han Pass where they were not further pursued. It was only the unusually strong and intelligent who succeeded in passing this mountain barrier before their pursuers overtook them; and these, as we will hereafter see, constituted the original members of the band known as the “Lost Tribe.”

Wu San-kuei was busy at that time dealing out destruction to all whom he suspected of having any affiliation with the usurper. When all were destroyed, he memorialized the throne to that effect, was rewarded with the title, “‘Pacafier of the West,’’ and was sent to other places to put down uprisings due to the unstable state of government. During the space of eighteen days, three Emperors had been on the throne.

When Wu San-kuei left the vicinity of Peking, these 300 men came forth, and with shaven heads, proffered their allegiance to the Manchu Dynasty, and sued for mercy. The usual penalty would have been death, but perhaps

the authorities had become surfeited with bloodshed, so substituted banishment. But where could be found a place sufficiently desolate for such rebels, and who would hold them to the penalties imposed? The place of banishment was back of the mountain fastnesses which had baffled their pursuers, but now, instead of protecting the fugitives, they were transformed into a cordon, perpetually isolating them and their posterity from intercourse with the outside world.

How different their aspect when viewed from these two stand-points! It is a mountainous region, 1¢c0 miles west of Peking, and measures 17 miles east and west, 13 miles north and south, and is just west of the Po Hua mountain. In this area there is almost no level land, and it may have been selected because it was believed they would here starve to death.

At that time the Cho Chou magistrate happened to be a man of liberal