renewed the work of 0-lo-peen, the Nestorian of the seventh century ; Islam has with the sword conquered the Turkestan region, which was the eastern gate of Buddhism, and it raises its mosques in many a village of China's sacred soil, yet the millions of the great Empire are Buddhists, not good ones—for it is hard, so hard, to be a good Buddhist—but Buddhists as Smith and Jones are Christians.
Shortly after the journey of Weng T'sang, that is, about the year 64o A.D., the administration of Turkestan was again firmly in the hands of the Chinese officials, only to be disturbed by marauding bands of Tibetans ; whether from the western Ladak country, relatively near, or from the Lhasa country, relatively far, seems not to be known. The centre of Tibetan power was in the East, but the newly conquered Ladak country may have served as the base of operations and recruiting depot for this dash against Kashgaria. This probably meant nothing more than the killing of some thousands and the maiming of some other thousands of field-workers and shopkeepers—a too frequent occurrence in the world's history to cause any shudders when separated from us by thirteen centuries and seven thousand miles. The Chinese soon drove out the Tibetans (whose leaders, it seems, were but a few generations down from Western China) and next had to contend with the Mohammedan power which had established itself, at the beginning of the eighth century, in all the Samarcand region, west of Kashgaria. The Chinese bond seems to have been strong enough in 716 A.D. to permit a troubled Emperor to call upon Kashgaria—and even far Bokhara—for troops to
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