a province of China, and one of the smallest in the empire. On the south it has Quang-ki, on the east Hou-quang, on the north Se-tchuen, and Yun-nan on the west. The whole country is almost a desert, and covered with inaccessible mountains: it may justly be called the Siberia of China. The people who inhabit it are mountaineers, accustomed to independence, and who seem to form a separate nation: they are no less ferocious than the savage animals among which they live.—The mandarins and governors who are sent to this province are sometimes disgraced noblemen, whom the emperor does not think proper to discard entirely, either on account of their alliances, or the services which Kempfer, which they have rendered to the state: numerous gar- rions are intrusted to their charge, to overawe the in- habitants of the country; but these troops are found insuffi- cient, and the court despairs of being ever able tho- roughly to subdue these untractable mountaineers.—Fre- quent attempts have been made to reduce them to obe- dience, and new forts have from time to time been erected in their country; but the people, who are not ignorant of those designs, keep themselves shut up among their mountains, and seldom issue forth but to destroy the Chinese works or ravage their lands. Neither silk stuffs nor cotton cloths are manufactured in this prov- ince; but it produces a certain herb much resembling our hemp, the cloth made of which is used for summer dresses. Mines of gold, silver, quicksilver, and copper, are found here; of the last metal, those small pieces of money are made which are in common circulation throughout the empire.—Koei-tcheou contains 10 cities of the first class, and 38 of the second and third.

KEMPFER, Engelbert, was born in 1651 at Lemgow in Westphalia. After studying in several towns, he went to Danzig, where he gave the first public specimen of his proficiency in a dissertation De majestatis divinitate. He then went to Thorn; and from thence to the university of Cracow, where he took his degree of doctor in philosophy; after which he went to Königsberg in Prussia, and studied there four years. He next travelled into Sweden, where he soon began to make a figure, and was appointed secretary of the embassy to the lophi of Persia. He set out from Stock- holm with the presents for that emperor; and went through Aaland, Finland, and Ingermanland, to Nar- va, where he met Mr Fabricius the ambassador, who had been ordered to take Moscow in his way. The ambassador having ended his negotiations at the Russian court, set out for Persia. During their stay, two years, at Ispahan, Dr Kempfer, whose curious and inquisitive disposition suffered nothing to escape him unobserved, made all the advantages possible of remaining so long in the capital of the Persian empire. The ambassador, to- wards the close of 1685, preparing to return into Eu- rope, Dr Kempfer chose rather to enter into the ser- vice of the Dutch East India Company, in quality of chief surgeon to the fleet, then cruising in the Persian gulf. He went aboard the fleet, which, after touching at many Dutch settlements, came to Batavia in Septem- ber 1689. Dr Kempfer here applied himself chiefly to natural history. Hence he set out for Japan, in qua- lity of a physician to the embassy which the Dutch East India Company send once a year to the Japanese court. He quitted Japan to return to Europe in 1692. In 1694 he took his degree of doctor of physic at Leyden; on which occasion he communicated, in what are called Inaugural Theses, ten very singular and curious observa- tions made by him in foreign countries. He intended to digest his memoirs into proper order; but was pre- vented, by being made physician to the count de Lippe. He died in 1716. His principal works are,

1. Amoenitatis Exoticae, in 4to; a work which includes many curious and useful particulars in relation to the civil and natural history of the countries through which he passed. 2. Herbarium Ultra-Gangeticum. 3. The history of Japan, in German, which is very curious and much esteemed; and for which the public is indebted to the late Sir Hans Sloane, who purchased for a con- siderable sum of money all our author's curiosities, both natural and artificial, as likewise all his drawings and manuscript memoirs, and prevailed with the learned Dr Scheuchzer to translate the Japanese history into English.

KEMPFERIA. See KEMPFERIA.