Father Amiot, a very cultivated and intelligent French missionary, says on the subject of the sacred books of the _Shu-King_: "The Chinese annals are superior to the historical documents of every other nation, because there is less fabulous matter in them, and because they are more ancient ... and more full of information of every kind ... They are worthy of our fullest confidence, because the epochs to which they refer are determined by astronomical observations, and the accounts of the events of all kinds which occur in those epochs can be mutually checked, and are found, when compared, to prove the good faith of the writers who have transmitted them to us." They are indeed simply invaluable to the student, forming as they do absolutely trustworthy guides to their researches into the early history of China, carrying it back for long centuries, or rather sexagenaries, for, as already remarked, the Chinese chronology reckons by sixties, not hundreds of years. One incidental proof of their veracity is the fact that their writers, when not fully informed, have left gaps in their narratives instead of filling them up as so many chroniclers would have done with imaginary matter. They are moreover works of literature rather than mere dry historical documents, and there is no series of books in the whole world on which so many able men have been employed as on the sacred records of the Chinese nation. What tales the literati might have told in those old days of their adventures on their way to the capital to take up their work as chroniclers! Even when I made the journey from Tien-tsin to Pekin, before the opening of the railway, I had variety enough, travelling now by boat, now in a palanquin, now in a sedan-chair, and sometimes on horseback, and things must have been far worse in those early days of the beginning of history. One shudders to think of what our own diplomatic agents must have gone through when, after much difficulty, they did at last obtain the coveted honour of representing the Western powers in the chief city of the Celestial Empire. They must have suffered horribly, the more that their presence was thoroughly unwelcome, and it was the delight of every petty official to throw obstacles in their way. The old literati, on the other hand, were treated with the greatest respect, and except when they happened to make some mistake in their astronomical calculations, when their heads paid the forfeit, they lived in considerable luxury.