Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/212

borean races that had long kept the northern borders of the Middle Kingdom in a state of unrest. Parker mentions a little known fact, namely, that Chinese history makes frequent mention of Russian imperial guards at the Mongol Court of Peking during the century ended in 1350, and since China had no political hold over Russia at that time, the only inference is that these men served the khans as mercenaries. They disappear altogether from Chinese annals throughout the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), though Mendez Pinto relates that he saw Russians in Shansi in 1547; but Russian annals say that envoys were sent to Peking in 1567, in 1619, and in 1653, and that all of them failed, the first two because they carried no presents, the third because the ambassador refused to prostrate himself before the Emperor. Meanwhile a desultory struggle was going on between Russians and Chinese along the banks of the Amur, and some delimitation of the frontier being necessary, commissioners of the two Powers met at Nerchinsk in 1689. There China signed her first international convention. Evidently she entertained a loftier conception of her own strength and of her sovereign rights at that era than she did when in 1902 she negotiated her last agreement with the same Power about the same question. The Missionary Gerbillon, who acted as intermediary, has left it on record that she showed herself far more exacting than her vis-à-vis, and the terms of the con-