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of Chili, an attempt was made to reach India viâ Yunnan, but it does not seem to have succeeded. The earliest conclusive evidence of the use of that route is found in the annals of the year 166 a. d., when Marcus Aurelius sent a mission to China through Burma and Yunnan. His reason for seeking access in that direction was that the Parthians, being resolved to retain their monopoly of the overland trade viâ Turfan, refused to give passage to Syrian envoys, just as, sixty-eight years previously, they had refused passage westward to a Chinese agent. They imagined that China was practically inaccessible from the south, and that they might themselves occupy the remunerative position of entrepôt for all time. The supposition was correct in so far as the almost deterrent difficulties of the Burma route were concerned. But the Parthians omitted from their calculations the possibility of an oversea avenue to southern China, and thus it fell out, towards the close of the second century a. d., that ships from the west began to reach Canton, and commerce was partially deflected to the ocean path in the south from the trans-Asian routes in the north.

The deflection would probably have become complete had not the Empire soon fallen once more into a divided state, lasting nearly four centuries, during which the north and the south were cut off from intercommunication, and each transacted its foreign trade independently of the other. The southern dynasties maintained a brisk commerce