It was only after gradually adopting Chinese civilization that Ts'in began to be a considerable power; thus, when Ki-chah of Wu was entertained at Lu with specimens of the various styles of music, he observed, on being regaled with Ts'in music: "Ah! civilized sounds; it has succeeded in refining itself; it is in occupation of the old Chou appanage." So late as 361 B.C., when Ngwei (one of the three royal subdivisions of old Tsin) built a wall to keep off Ts'in, both Ngwei and Ts'u (which by this time was quite as good orthodox Chinese as any other state) treated Ts'in as though the latter were still barbarian, In 326 Ts'in first introduced into her realm the well-known year-end sacrifices of the orthodox Chinese, which fact alone points to a long isolation of Ts'in before this date. The rule of succession in Ts'in seems to have been of the Tartar kind at one time. Duke Muh, in 660 B.C., succeeded his brother, though that brother had seven sons of his own living: that brother again, had also succeeded a brother. As to Yüeh, there is no question as to its barbarism, though the one single king around whose name centres the whole glory of Yiieh (Kou-tsien, 496-475) seems to have been a man of great ability and some fine feeling. The native name for Yiieh was _Yü-yüeh_, as stated in Chapter VII.; and it seems likely that all the coast of China down to Tonquin, or Northern Annam, was then inhabited by cognate tribes, all having the syllable _Yüeh_, or _Viét_, in their names. The great empire or kingdom of Yiieh, founded upon the ruins of Wu, soon split up into the "Hundred Yiieh," i.e. (probably) it relapsed into its native barbarism, and ceased to cohere as a political factor. "Southern Yüeh" (the Canton region) has undoubted historical connections with the Tonquin part of Annam, and several other of the subdivisions of Yiieh, corresponding to Foochow, Wênchow, etc., show distinct traces of having belonged to the same race. But it is unsafe to say how the Chinese-transcribed name Yii-yiieh was pronounced; still more unsafe is it to argue that it must have been _U_ or _O-viêt_ simply because the Annamese so pronounce the word now. We have seen that, according to one historical statement, the Wu and Yiieh people spoke the same language; in which case the members of the ruling Wu caste who fled to Japan in 473 B.C. were probably not of the same race as the "savages around them." As an act of bravado, in 481, the King of Wu made five condemned centurions cut their own throats before the Tsin envoy, in order to show what effectively stern discipline he kept, In 484 the King of Yiieh had already committed a similar act of bravado; but neither of these barbarian states is distinctly recorded to have indulged in human sacrifices at the death of a sovereign. Previous to the crushing of Wu by Yiieh, in 473 B.C., Yiieh was nearly annihilated by Wu, and on this occasion Kou-tsien's envoy advanced crawling on his knees to beg for mercy; this is hardly an