Rome; and to that end sent an emissary down through Parthia to take ship at the port of Babylon for the unknown West.  The Parthians (who were all against the two great empires becoming acquainted, because they are making a good thing of it as middle-men in the Roman-Chinese caravan trade), knew better, probably, than to oppose Pan Chow’s designs openly; but their agents haunted the quays at Babylon, tampered with west-going skippers, and persuaded the Chinese envoy to go no farther.  But I wonder whether some impulse achieved flowing across the world from east to west at that time, even though its physical link or channel was thus left incomplete?  It was in that very year that Nerva re-established constitutionalism and good government in Rome.

Pan Chow worked as if by magic:  seemed to make no effort, yet accomplished all things.  For nearly forty years he kept that vast territory in order, despite the huge frontier northward, and the breeding-place of nomad nations beyond.  All north of Tibet is a region of marvels.  Where you were careful to leave only the village blacksmith under his spreading chestnut-tree, or the innkeeper and his wife, for the sake of future travelers, let a century or two pass, and their descendants would be as the sea-sands for multitude; they would have founded a power, and be thundering down on an empire-smashing raid in Persia or China or India:  Whether Huns, Sienpi, Jiujen, Turks, Tatars, Tunguses, Mongols, Manchus:  God knows what all, but all destroyers.  But as far as the old original Huns were concerned, Pan Chow settled their hash for them.  Bag and baggage he dealt with them; and practically speaking, the land of their fathers knew them no more.  Dry the starting tear! here your pity is misplaced.  Think of no vine-covered cottages ruined; no homesteads burned; no fields laid waste.  They lived mainly in the saddle; they were as much at home fleeing before the Chinese army as at another time.  A shunt here; a good kick off there:  so he dealt with them.  It is in European veins their blood flows now;—­and prides itself on its pure undiluted Aryanism and Nordicism, no doubt.  I suppose scarcely a people in continental Europe is without some mixture of it; for they enlisted at last in all foraying armies, and served under any banner and chief.

Pan Chow felt that they belonged to the (presumably) barbarous regions west of the Caspian.  Ta Ts’in in future might deal with them; by God’s grace, Han never should.  He gently pushed them over the brink; removed them; cut the cancer out of Asia.  Next time they appeared in history, it was not on the Hoangho, but on the Danube.  Meanwhile, they established themselves in Russia; moved across Central Europe, impelling Quadi and Marcomans against Marcus Aurelius, and then Teutons of all sorts against the whole frontier of Rome.  In the sixties, for Han Mingti, Pan Chow set that great wave in motion in the far east of the world.  Three times thirteen