Until the close of the autumn of 1876 Yakoob Beg had not devoted much personal attention to his eastern frontier. After the first Tungan war and the capture of Kucha he had confided to his son and his lieutenants, the charge of maintaining order in the annexed districts, and of protecting his dominions against any hostile attempt on the part of the Chinese. About the month of September in that year couriers arrived with strange tidings in Kashgar. The message, we can well imagine, was terrible in its brevity. The Chinese had appeared north of the Tian Shan. They had sacked Urumtsi, and were laving close siege to Manas. Their numbers rumour had magnified to almost a hundred thousand combatants, and they came armed with all the auxiliaries Western science could supply. Before following the movements of the ruler of Kashgar upon the receipt of this intelligence, it will be necessary to consider what had been the history of this Chinese army which had so suddenly appeared in Jungaria. When in the natural course of events the Chinese government, having solved the Taeping and Panthay difficulties, having restored order where disorder had been supreme, and having created an army where there had been only a disorganized rabble, turned its attention to the question, which it had never lost sight of, of chastising the Tungan rebels beyond Kansuh, the victorious soldiers of Yunnan, instead of being disbanded, were invited to participate in a fresh campaign in the regions beyond Gobi. It requires no great stretch of imagination to realize the scene when the imperial edict came before these veterans, calling on all true soldiers to vindicate their country's honour and their outraged religion against the Tungan outcasts; how the generals, such as Chang Yao, set an example of enthusiasm which the main body of their soldiers speedily followed. In the presence of such military enthusiasm we are transported back to the days of imperial Rome, when the subjection of one province was only the prelude to some fresh triumph, and when every campaign found in the ranks of the army the veterans of the last. So it was that the victors of Talifoo, by long marches through Szchuen and Shensi, reached Lanchefoo, the capital of Kansuh, where the viceroy of that province was gathering together the munitions of war, and the recruits who were to swell the nucleus of trained soldiers to the proportions suitable to an invading army. Some have considered, and we are far from denying that there is much to support such a view, that there was a political motive at the root of this enterprise, the motive being a desire on the part of the ruling family to give employment to a large disciplined body of men, who if retained in China proper would be at the service of any powerful conspirator or presumptuous aspirant to imperial honours. Whether there is any foundation or not for this supposition, it is certain that those troops who were not required for garrison work in