The Kitans were known to Chinese authors as early as the fifth century, seven nomad tribes being at that time confederate under their banners. At the beginning of the tenth century, these wanderers had been transformed into hordes of disciplined cavalry. Their wealth and intelligence having increased by conquest, they formed a great empire in 925, which extended from the Altai Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and from within the Great Wall to the Yablonoi Mountains, having Peking for one of its capitals. It flourished until the twelfth century (A.D. 1125), when it gave way to the Kin empire, which held Mongolia and still more territory than the Kitans possessed within what is now China proper.
This Kin empire was founded by the expansion of the Nüjun, who, from their seats north of the Tumen and east of the Sungari, had gradually widened, and by conquest absorbed the Kitans. Aguta, the founder of the new empire, gave it the name of the [[69]]Golden Dominion. During its existence Corea was not troubled by her great neighbor, and for two hundred years enjoyed peace within her borders. Her commerce now flourished at all points of the compass, both on land, with her northern and western neighbors, with the Japanese on the east, and the Chinese south and west. Much direct intercourse in ships, guided by the magnetic needle, “the chariot of the south,” took place between Ningpo and Sunto. Mr. Edkins states that the oldest recorded instance of the use of the mariner’s compass is that in the Chinese historian’s account of the voyage of the imperial ambassador to Corea, from Nanking by way of Ningpo, in a fleet of eight vessels, in the year 1122.
The Arabs, who about this time were also trading with the Coreans, and had lived in their country, soon afterward introduced this silent friend of the mariner into their own country in the west, whence it found its way into Europe and to the hands of Columbus. To the eye of the Corean its mysterious finger pointed to the south. To the western man it pointed to the lode-star.
The huge wide-open eyes which the sailors of Chinese Asia paint at the prow of their ship, to discover a path in the sea, became more than ever an empty fancy before this unerring pathfinder. As useless as the ever-open orbs on a mummy lid, these lidless eyes were relegated to the domain of poetry, while the swinging needle opened new paths of science and discovery.
Coin of Korai. “Ko-ka” (Name of Year-Period). “Current Money.”
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