their great ministers, keeping up the honour and the sacrifices of
bygone historical personages. As for the minor fiefs, numbering
somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred, these play no
part in political history, except as this or that one of them may
have been thrust prominently forward for a moment as a pawn in the
game of ambition played by the greater vassals. Nominally the
Emperor was direct suzerain lord of all vassals, great or small;
but in practice the greater vassal princes seem to have been what
in the Norman feudal system were called "mesne lords"; that is,
each one was surrounded by his own group of minor ruling lords,
who, in turn, naturally clung for protection to that powerful
magnate who was most immediately accessible in case of need; thus
vassal rulers might be indefinitely multiplied, and there is some
vagueness as to their numbers.

Just as the oldest civilizations of the West concentrated
themselves along the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, so the
most ancient Chinese civilization is found concentrated along the
south bank of the Yellow River. The configuration of the land as
shown on a modern map assists us to understand how the industrious
cultivators and weavers, finding the flat and so-called
_loess_ territory too confined for their ever-increasing
numbers, threw out colonies wherever attraction offered, and
wherever the riverine systems gave them easy access; whether by
boat and raft; or whether--as seems more probable, owing to the
scanty mention of boat-travel--by simply following the low levels
sought by the streams, and tilling on their way such pasturages as
they found by the river-sides. When it is said that the earliest
Chinese we know of clung to the Yellow River bed, it must be
remembered that "the River" (as they call it simply) turned sharp