Now this simple faith, when the whole of the Chinese Empire consisted of about 50,000 square miles of level plain, inhabited probably by not more than 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 homogeneous people, was admirably suited for the patriarchal rule of a central chief (the King or Emperor), receiving simple tribute of metals, hemp, cattle, sacrificial supplies, etc.; entertaining his relatives and princely friends when they came to do annual homage and to share in periodical sacrifice; declaring the penal laws (there were no other laws) for all his vassals; compassionating and conciliating the border tribes living beyond those vassals. But this peaceful bucolic life, in the course of time and nature, naturally produced a gradual increase in the population; the Chinese cultivators spread themselves over the expanse of _loess_ formed by the Yellow River and Desert deposits and by aeons of decayed vegetation in the low-lying lands; no other nation or tribe within their ken having the faintest notion of written character, there was consequently no political cohesion of any sort amongst the non-Chinese tribes; the position was akin to that of the European powers grafting themselves for centuries upon the still primitive African tribes, comparatively few of which have seen fit to turn the art of writing to the practical purpose of keeping records and cementing their own power. Wherever a Chinese adventurer went, there he became founder of a state; to this day we see enterprising Chinamen founding petty "dynasties" in the Siamese Malay Peninsula; or, for instance, an Englishman like Rajah Brooke founding a private dynasty in Borneo.