With the reign of Yao the historical work of Confucius begins. His narrative is not trustworthy history, but it is not pure fable. Yao and Shun, his successor, are two of the notable characters in the ancient annals of China. Under them virtue reigned supreme, crime was unknown, and the empire grew in extent and prosperity. The greatest difficulty with which they had to contend was the overflow of the Hoang-ho, an unruly stream, which from that day to this has from time to time swept away its banks and drowned its millions. Yu, the next emperor, drained off the waters of the mighty flood,--which some have thought the same as the deluge of Noah. This work occupied him for nine years. His last notable act was to denounce the inventor of an intoxicating drink made from rice, from which he predicted untold misery to the people. All this comes to us from the Confucian "Book of History," which goes on with questionable stories of many later emperors. They were not all good and wise, like most of those named. Some of the descendants of Yu became tyrants and pleasure-seekers, their palaces the seats of scenes of cruelty and debauchery surpassing the deeds of Nero. Two emperors in particular, Kee and Chow, are held up as monsters of wickedness and examples of dissoluteness beyond comparison. The last, under the influence of a woman named Ta-Ke, became a frightful example of sensuality and cruelty. Among the inventions of Ta-Ke was a cylinder of polished brass, along which her victims were forced to walk over a bed of fire below, she laughing in great glee if they slipped and fell into the flames. In fact, Chinese invention exhausts itself in describing the crimes and immoral doings of this abominable pair, which, fortunately, we are not obliged to believe. Of the later emperors, Mou Wang, who came to the throne about 1000 B.C., was famed as a builder of palaces and public works, and was the first of the emperors to come into conflict with the Tartars of the Mongolian plains, who afterwards gave China such endless trouble. He travelled into regions before unknown, and brought a new breed of horses into China, which, fed on "dragon grass," were able to travel one thousand _li_ in a day. As this distance is nearly four hundred miles, it would be well for modern horsemen if some of that dragon grass could yet be found. It is not worth while going on with the story of these early monarchs, of whom all we know is so brief and unimportant as not to be worth the telling, while little of it is safe to believe. In the "burning of the books," which took place later, most of the ancient history disappeared, while the "Book of History" of Confucius, which professes to have taken from the earlier books all that was worth the telling, is too meagre and unimportant in its story to be of much value.