286 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



throughout Central Asia, while their Turki kinsmen are zealous 

 followers of the Prophet. Thus is seen, for instance, the strange 

 spectacle of two Mongolic groups, the Kirghiz of the Turki 

 branch and the Kalmuks of the West Mongol branch, encamped 

 side by side on the Lower Volga plains, the former all under 

 the banner of the Crescent, the latter devout worshippers of 

 all the incarnations of Buddha. But analogous phenomena 

 occur amongst the European peoples, the Teutons being mainly 

 Protestants, those of neo-Latin speech mainly Roman Catholics, 

 and the Easterns Orthodox. From all this, however, nothing 

 more can be inferred than that the religions are partly a question 

 of geography, partly determined by racial temperament and 

 political conditions; while the religious sentiment, being universal, 

 is above all local or ethnical considerations. 



Under the first term of the expression Mongolo-Turki (p. 267) 

 are comprised, besides the Mongols proper, nearly all those 

 branches of the division which lie to the east and north-east 

 of Mongolia, and are in most respects more closely allied with 

 the Mongol than with the Turki section. Such are the Tunguses, 

 with the kindred Manchus, Golds, Orochons, Lamuts, and others 

 of the Amur basin, the Upper Lena head-streams, the eastern 

 affluents of the Yenisei, and the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk ; 

 the Gilyaks about the Amur estuary and in the northern parts 

 of Sakhalin ; the Kamchadales in South Kamchatka ; in the 

 extreme north-east the Koryaks, Chukchis, and Yukaghirs; lastly 

 the Koreans, Japanese, and Liu-Kiu (Lu-Chii] Islanders. To the 

 Mongol section thus belong nearly all the peoples lying between 

 the Yenisei and the Pacific (including most of the adjacent archi- 

 pelagos), and between the Great Wall and the Arctic Ocean. 

 The only two exceptions are the Yakuts of the middle and lower 

 Lena and neighbouring arctic rivers, who are of Turki stock ; and 

 the Ainus of Yezo, South Sakhalin, and some of the Kurile Islands, 

 who belong to the Caucasic division. 



A striking illustration of the general statement that the various 



cultural states are a question not of race, but of 



Tunguses environment 1 , is afforded by the varying social 



conditions of the wide-spread Tungus family, who 



1 Ethnology, p. -215. 



