In China, strangely enough, where the oldest historical records would be expected, we can find nothing to compare with the Egyptian papyri or the Chaldean clay-cylinders, and competent authorities are well agreed that there is great reason to suppose that much of the early civilization was brought from Accadia. In any case, at the dawn of history, we find China just as she is to-day:--an overpopulated, agricultural country, where blind imitation of predecessors ruled, and, consequently, progress, unless brought in by conquest, is extremely slow. If the empire was founded, as has been supposed, by an Accadian invasion or immigration, which must have occurred about 5,000 B. C., or at least before the time of Sargon I, then these wanderers drove out the aboriginal inhabitants, the Mioutse, who have been crowded at last into the mountains of the western provinces. Certain it is that no greater date can be assigned to the civilization of this country, at the beginning of its historical record, than about 2,750 B. C., which time is known in Chinese tradition as the "Age of the Five Rulers." Perhaps next in order of antiquity, comes the small country known as Elam, lying between the Tigris River and the Lagros Mountains, and extending to the south along the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. As in both Egypt and Chaldea, this country was brought into prominence by an aggressive and warlike king,--the famous Cyrus of history,--and, fortunately, his clay-cylinder; from one of the magnificent libraries of Susa, or Shushan; was recently found by Mr. Rassam, amid the débris composing the mound, which is now the only mark left to show where these great centers of population once were, in the fertile valleys and coast plains of this part of Asia; and this cylinder is now kept, with hundreds from like sources, in the British Museum at London. On this memorial cylinder, Cyrus gives his genealogy and an account of his exploits, and we find that he came from a line of kings, and held to the popular faith of his country, thanking and petitioning the whole Elamite Hierarchy of gods. Cyrus carried the Elamite arms into southern Syria and Palestine, and overthrew Mesopotamia about 2,300 B. C. It was the reaction from this conquest that caused some of the most gigantic struggles of antiquity.