In very old times, the Chinese wore their long hair put up in a peculiar manner upon the tops of their heads, and called themselves "The Black-Haired Race;" but about the time that the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, in the year 1627, the Tartars, who had come down from Manchuria, and, after long wars, had conquered China, which they have governed ever since, made a law that all the Chinese, to show that they had been conquered, should take down their top-knots, and wear their hair as the Tartars did, in a hanging braid; and they threatened to kill all who would not do it. Of course the Chinese were greatly distressed by this; but, as it was better to have a tail than to be without a head, they submitted in the end, making the best of what they could not help. The people of southern China held out longest against the queue, and, in one district, men were hired to wear it. Even now, dwelling among the hills, are a few men belonging to a very old and wild tribe, whose pride it is that they have never worn hanging hair; while the Amoy men, who were the very last to yield to the Tartars, wear a turban to hide the shaven head, and the detested tail; but some persons think that the nation in general have come to like the new style better that the old; others think that they would gladly go back to the old way, if they could. A few years ago there was a great rebellion in China. A part of the Chinese rebelled against the Tartars, and all the rebels put up their hair in the old Chinese fashion; and, because they did not shave their heads, they went by the name of the "Long-Haired Robbers." When any of their soldiers met a man with a queue they knew that he was loyal to the Tartar government, and they would kill him, or cut off his queue, or do what they liked with him; and, on the other hand, the life of a "Long-Haired Robber" was not safe for a moment if he fell into the hands of the government troops. At length, after many, many millions of people were killed, queues carried the day, and the rebels were conquered. I have heard that thieves sometimes have their queues cut off for a punishment, and, now and then, I suppose, a person's hair must fall off after illness, but, in these cases, it would grow again. There are two classes of men in China who never wear queues--the Buddhist priests, who shave their heads all over, and who can be known by the color of their gowns, and their queer hats, and the Tauists, who, as a sign of their priesthood, wear their hair in a kind of twist on the back of their heads. With these few exceptions, every Chinaman has a queue, from the young child whose short hairs are pinched up, sometimes on the crown of the head, and sometimes on the sides of it, and braided with threads of red silk into a tight little tail a few inches long, so stiff that it stands straight out from the head, up to the almost bald old man, whose straggling gray hairs are tied into a thin wisp at the back of his neck.