The great Empire of China now existed unmolested by the Hordes, and after a few hard fights ruled Asia as far as the borders of Persia. Its outposts almost met those of the Empire of Rome. Both realms were, about this date, in peace and prosperity. There is even a record of trade between them, the Chinese annals telling of an expedition of King An-tun, or Antoninus, in 166 A.D., to Burmah, from which his factors reached the Middle Kingdom; and of glass, drugs, metals, and game obtained overland by way of Parthia from Ta-ts’in, the Great Empire. Pliny writes of silk, iron, furs, and skins, caravan-brought from China. So moved the two empires until 376 A.D., when Valens the Irresolute reigned in Byzantium. To him came messengers bringing word of great alarm from the Danube. The whole nation of Goths were on the bank, begging a refuge in Roman territory. “Wild enemies, from where we know not, are upon us!” they cried. The Goths, who were to subvert the declining empire, were escaping from before the western division of the old Hiung-nu. Valens had the Goths ferried over the Danube, and the Huns established themselves in the vacated places of what is now Austria. [Illustration: THE MIRACLE OF ATTILA’S REPULSE (From a painting by Raphael in Vatican)] Amid those hordes arose a leader destined to leave a memory in the sagas of the Scandinavian bards, in the Niebelungenlied of the Teutons, and a lurid trail in the annals of the Cæsars. He called himself a descendant of the great Nimrod, “nurtured in Engaddi, by the grace of God, King of the Huns, the Goths, the Danes, the Medes; the Dread of the World,”--Attila. A profound politician, he alternately cajoled and threatened the peoples whose conquest he undertook; a true barbarian, no food save flesh and milk passed his lips. He and his men worshiped the mysteriously discovered scimitar of Mars, and from Persia to Gaul, from Finland to the walls of Constantinople, his armies ranged. Ambassadors went from his Court to China. The great battle of Chalons, in which, aided by the Goths, the dwindling forces of Rome’s Western Empire won their last victory, alone preserved Europe from his yoke. His descendants, mixing with succeeding conquerors, have remained until this day in the land that is called, after their dreaded name, Hungary.