As to Ts'in, Ts'in's own Annals tell us that "in 753 B.C. historians were first established to keep record of events." Hence even the Ts'in records, the sole annals preserved from the flames, must be retrospective from that date. In any case they contain nothing of historical importance farther back than 753 B.C., except the wars with Tartars; the accompanying of the Emperor Muh, as charioteer, by a Ts'in prince on the occasion of his "going to examine his fiefs in the west"; and the cession of the old Chou appanage to Ts'in in 771. By their baldness, and by the baldness of the Bamboo Books, and of Confucius' own "Springs and Autumns," we may fairly judge of the probable insufficiency and dryness of the Annals of Ts'u, Ts'i, Wei, CHÊNG, Sung, and other states interested in the welter of the Fighting State Period. Early Chinese annals contain little more satisfying than the "generations of Adam" in the fifth chapter of Genesis. CHAPTER XXXI ORIGIN OF THE CHINESE Having now derived some definite notions of how the Chinese advanced from the patriarchal to the feudal, from the submissive and monarchical to the emulous and democratic, finally to collapse under the overpowering grasp of a single Dictator or Despot, whose centralized system in the main, still survives; having also seen how the nucleus of China proper was encompassed on three sides by Tibetans, Tartars, Tunguses, Coreans, and by various ill-defined tribes to the south; let us see if there is any evidence whatever to show, or even to suggest to us, whence the orthodox Chinese originally came, and who they were.