VIII.] THE NORTHERN MONGOLS. 293 



Amur. Daur is, in fact, the name applied by the Buryats to all 

 the Tungus peoples of the Amur basin. The Dauri proper, who 

 are now perhaps the best representatives of the original Manchu 

 type, would seem to have intermingled at a remote time with the 

 long-headed pre-Mongol populations of central Asia. They are 

 "taller and stronger than the Oronchons [Tungus groups lower 

 down the Amur] ; the countenance is oval and more intellectual, 

 and the cheeks are less broad. The nose is rather prominent, 

 and the eyebrows straight. The skin is tawny, and the hair 

 brown 1 ." Most of these characters are such as we should expect 

 to find in a people of mixed Mongolo-Caucasic descent, the latter 

 element being derived from the long-headed race who had already 

 reached the present Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, and the adjacent 

 islands during neolithic times. Thus may be explained the tall 

 stature, somewhat regular features, brown hair, light eyes, and even 

 florid complexion so often observed amongst the present inhabit- 

 ants of Manchuria, Korea, and parts of North China. 



But no admixture, except of Chinese literary terms, is seen in 

 the Manchu language, which, like Mongolic, is a 

 typical member of the agglutinating Ural-Altaic TurkTspeech. 

 family. Despite great differences, lexical, phonetic, 

 and even structural, all the members of this widespread order 

 of speech have in common a number of fundamental features, 

 which justify the assumption that all spring from an original stock 

 language, which has long been extinct, and the germs of which 

 were perhaps first developed on the Tibetan plateau. The 

 essential characters of the system are: (i) a "root" or notional 

 term, generally a closed syllable, nominal or verbal, with a vowel 

 or diphthong, strong or weak (hard or soft) according to the mean- 

 ing of the term, hence incapable of change ; (2) a number of 

 particles or relational terms somewhat loosely postfixed to the 

 root, but incorporated with it by the principle of (3) vowel 

 harmony, a kind of vocal concordance, in virtue of which the 

 vowels of all the postfixes must harmonise with the unchangeable 

 vowel of the root. If this is strong all the following vowels of the 

 combination, no matter what its length, must be strong ; if weak 



1 Lansdell, II. p. 172. 



