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the foreign countries to the northwest began to have intercourse with Han. As Chang Ch'ien was the one who blazed way, later envoys who went there all styled themselves commissioners of Knight of Far sight in making pledges to foreign countries which trusted his faith. After the death of Chang Ch'ien, the Knight of Far sight, Hsiungnu learnt with anger about Usun's intercourse with Han and wanted to attack it. When Han's envoy passed through southern Usun and reached Tayuan, the Greater Yuehchih and other neighbouring countries, the King of Usun became afraid and asked the envoy to accept horses as offerings and expressed the wish for a Han princess to seal the brotherhood (matrimonial relations). When the Emperor sought counsel from the state officers, they all said that: "The girl must not be sent before the betrothal presents are brought". Before that the Emperor had consulted the Book of Changes which augured that a divine horse would come from the northwest. Afterwards he got the horse from Usun which was very good, and named it the "heavenly horse." Then he obtained the horse from Tayuan which sweated blood and was even stronger. So the Usun horse was renamed the "extreme west", and the Tayuan horse was named the "heavenly horse". It was then (121 B.C.) that Han began to build the defences to the west of Lingchu. The Chiuchuan County was established to increase contact with the foreign countries to the northwest — 10 —