II. THE MONGULS

Monguls.–Origin of the name.–A Mongul family.–Their occupations.–Animals of the Monguls.–Their towns and villages.–Mode of building their tents.–Bad fuel.–Comfortless homes.–Movable houses built at last.–The painting.–Account of a large movable house.–The traveling chests.–Necessity of such an arrangement.–Houses in the towns.–Roads over the plains.–Tribes and families.–Influence of diversity of pursuits.–Tribes and clans.–Mode of making war.–Horsemen.–The bow and arrow.–The flying horseman.–Nature of the bow and arrow.–Superiority of fire-arms.–Sources of information.–Gog and Magog.–Salam.–Adventures of Salam and his party.–The wonderful mountain.–Great bolts and bars.–The prisoners.–Travelers’ tales.–Progress of intelligence.

THREE THOUSAND years is a period of time long enough to produce great changes, and in the course of that time a great many different nations and congeries of nations were formed in the regions of Central Asia. The term Tartars has been employed generically to denote almost the whole race. The Monguls are a portion of this people, who are said to derive their name from Mongol Khan, one of their earliest and most powerful chieftains. The descendants of this khan called themselves by his name, just as the descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob called themselves Israelites, or children of Israel, from the name Israel, which was one of the designations of the great patriarch from whose twelve sons the twelve tribes of the Jews descended. The country inhabited by the Monguls was called Mongolia.

To obtain a clear conception of a single Mongul family, you must imagine, first, a rather small, short, thick-set man, with long black hair, a flat face, and a dark olive complexion. His wife, if her face were not so flat and her nose so broad, would be quite a brilliant little beauty, her eyes are so black and sparkling. The children have much the appearance of young Indians as they run shouting among the cattle on the hill-sides, or, if young, playing half-naked about the door of the hut, their long black hair streaming in the wind.

Like all the rest of the inhabitants of Central Asia, these people depended almost entirely for their subsistence on the products of their flocks and herds. Of course, their great occupation consisted in watching their animals while feeding by day, and in putting them in places of security by night, in taking care of and rearing the young, in making butter and cheese from the milk, and clothing from the skins, in driving the cattle to and fro in search of pasturage, and, finally, in making war on the people of other tribes to settle disputes arising out of conflicting claims to territory, or to replenish their stock of sheep and oxen by seizing