century the Chinese learned the situation of the great peninsula Aliaska, which they named Tahan, or Great China. Beyond this, at the end of the fifth century,—be it observed that the advances in discovery correspond in time in the records,—they discovered a land which Deguignes long after identified with the north-west coast of America. With each discovery, the people of these new lands were compelled, or were represented at court as having been compelled, to send ambassadors wife tribute to the Central Realm, or China.
But there had been unofficial Chinese travelers in Western America, and even in Mexico itself, before this time. Those who have examined the history of that vast religious movement of Asia which, contemporary with Christianity, shook the hoary faiths of the East, while a higher and purer doctrine was overturning those of the West, are aware that it had many external points or forms in common with those of the later Roman church, which have long been a puzzle to the wise. To say nothing of mitres, tapers, violet robes, rosaries, bells, convents, auricular confession, and many other singular identities, the early Buddhist church distinguished itself by a truly catholic zeal for the making of converts, and, to effect this, sent its emissaries to Central Africa and Central Russia; from the Sclavonian frontier on the west to China, Japan, and the farthest Russian isles of the east. On they went; who shall say where they paused? We know that there are at this day in St. Petersburg certain books on black paper taken from a Buddhist temple found in a remote northern corner of Russia. It was much less of an undertaking, and much less singular, that Chinese priests should pass, by short voyages, from island to island, almost over the proposed Russian route for the Pacific telegraph to America. That they did so is explicitly stated in the Year Books, which contain details relative to Fusang, or Mexico, where it is said of the inhabitants that 'in earlier times these people lived not according to the laws of Buddha. But it happened in the second "year-naming" "Great Light" of Song (A.D. 458), that five beggar monks, from the kingdom Kipin, went to this land, extended over it the religion of Buddha, and with it his holy writings and images. They instructed the people in the principles of monastic life, and so changed their manners.'
But I am anticipating my subject. In another chapter I propose, on the authority of Professor Neumann, a learned Sinologist of Munich, to set forth the proofs that in the last year of the fifth century a Buddhist priest, bearing the cloister name of Hoei-schin, or Universal Compassion, returned from America, and gave for the first time an official account of the country which he had visited, which account was recorded, and now remains as a simple fact among the annual registers of the government.
The Spur Of Monmouth
'Twas a little brass half-circlet,
Deep gnawed by rust and stain,
That the farmer's urchin brought me,
Plowed up on old Monmouth plain;
On that spot where the hot June sunshine
Once a fire more deadly knew,
And a bloodier color reddened
Where the red June roses blew;—
Where the moon of the early harvest
Looked down through the shimmering leaves,
And saw where the reaper of battle
Had gathered big human sheaves.
Old Monmouth, so touched with glory—
So tinted with burning shame—
As Washington's pride we remember,
Or Lee's long tarnished name.
'Twas a little brass half-circlet;
And knocking the rust away,
And clearing the ends and the middle
From their buried shroud of clay,
I saw, through the damp of ages
And the thick disfiguring grime,
The buckle-heads and the rowel
Of a spur of the olden time.
And I said—what gallant horseman,
Who revels and rides no more,
Perhaps twenty years back, or fifty,
On his heel that weapon wore?
Was he riding away to his bridal,
When the leather snapped in twain?
Was he thrown and dragged by the stirrup,
With the rough stones crushing his brain?
Then I thought of the Revolution,
Whose tide still onward rolls—
Of the free and the fearless riders
Of the 'times that tried men's souls.'
What if, in the day of battle
That raged and rioted here,
It had dropped from the foot of a soldier,
As he rode in his mad career?
What if it had ridden with Forman,
When he leaped through the open door,
With the British dragoon behind him,
In his race o'er the granary floor?
What if—but the brain grows dizzy
With the thoughts of the rusted spur;
What if it had fled with Clinton,
Or charged with Aaron Burr?
But bravely the farmer's urchin
Had been scraping the rust away;
And cleansed from the soil that swathed it,
The spur before me lay.
Here are holes in the outer circle—
No common heel it has known,
For each space, I see by the setting,
Once held some precious stone.
And here—not far from the buckle—
Do my eyes deceive their sight?—
Two letters are here engraven,
That initial a hero's might!
'G.W.'! Saints of heaven!
Can such things in our lives occur?
Do I grasp such a priceless treasure?
Was this George Washington's spur?
Did the brave old Pater Patrioe
Wear that spur like a belted knight—
Wear it through gain and disaster,
From Cambridge to Monmouth flight?
Did it press his steed in hot anger
On Long Island's day of pain?
Did it drive him, at terrible Princeton,
'Tween two storms of leaden rain?
And here—did the buckle loosen,
And no eye look down to see,
When he rode to blast with the lightning
The shrinking eyes of Lee?
Did it fall, unfelt and unheeded,
When that fight of despair was won,
And Clinton, worn and discouraged,
Crept away at the set of sun?
The lips have long been silent
That could send an answer back;
And the spur, all broken and rusted,
Has forgotten its rider's track!
I only know that the pulses
Leap hot, and the senses reel,
When
