"The inundating waters seemed to assail the heavens, and in their vast extent embraced the mountains and over-topped the hills, so that people were bewildered and overwhelmed. I mounted my four conveyances,[111] and all along the hills hewed down the woods, at the same time, along with Yih, showing the multitudes how to get flesh to eat. "I also opened passages for the streams throughout the nine provinces, and conducted them to the sea. I deepened, moreover, the channels and canals, and conducted them to the streams, at the same time, along with Tseih, sowing _grain_, and showing the multitudes how to procure the food of toil _in addition_ to flesh meat." Yu's success is simply chronicled in the Bamboo Books as, "In his seventy-fifth year Yu, the Superintendent of Works, regulated the Ho." There was a legend extant in China in the times of Pinto, which he gives in his book, of the original Chinese having migrated from a region in the West, and, following the course of the Ho in boats, finally settling in the country adjacent to Pekin. That some such event took place is not unlikely. Its acceptance would explain much that is difficult. The pioneers, pushing through a country infested with hostile aborigines, who would immediately after their passage close up the road of communication behind them--pioneers who may have been fugitives from their kindred through political commotions, or expelled by successful enemies--would have a further barrier against return, even were they disposed to attempt it, in the strong opposing current which had borne them safely to their new homes. It is probable that such a journey would form an entirely new departure for their history, and that a few generations later it would resemble a nebulous chronological zone, on the far side of which could be dimly seen myths of persons and events representing in reality the history of the not very remote ancestors from whom they had become separated. The early arrivals would have been too much occupied with establishing themselves in their new dominions to be able to give much attention to keeping records or preserving other than the most utilitarian branches of knowledge which they had brought with them. The volumes of their ancestors were probably, like the clay tablets of the royal library of Babylon, not of a portable nature, at all events to fugitives, whose knowledge would, therefore, be rather of a practical than of a cultivated nature, and this would soon become limited for a while to their chiefs and religious instructors, the exigencies of a colony menaced with danger prohibiting any general acquisition or extension of learning. In this way we can account for the community of the fables relating to the remote antiquity of the Chinese with those of Chaldean and Indian mythology, and with the highly civilized administration and astrological knowledge possessed by Yao and Shun as herediton of Fuh Hi, &c.