Note 83 — PART II. CONTAINING THE CONQUEST OF SIBERIA, AND THE HISTORY OF THE TRANSACTIONS AND COMMERCE BETWEEN RUSSIA AND CHINA.

Camhi was the second emperor of the Manshur race, who made themselves masters of China in 1624.

The Manshurs were originally an obscure tribe of the Tungusian Tartars, whose territories lay South of the Amoor, and bordered upon the kingdom of Corea, and the province of Leaotong. They began to emerge from obscurity at the beginning of the seventeenth century. About that time their chief Aischin-Giord reduced several neighbouring hordes; and, having incorporated them with his own tribe, under the general name of Manshur, he became formidable even to the Chinese. Shuntschi, grandson of this chief, by an extraordinary concurrence of circumstances, was raised while an infant to the throne of China, of which his successors still continue in possession. Shuntschi died in 1662, and was succeeded by Camhi, who is well known from the accounts of the jesuit missionaries.

For an account of the revolution of China, see Duhalde, Descr. de la Chine, Bell's Journey to Pekin, and Fis. Sic. Ges. tom. I. p. 463.