MODERN MONGOLS. 623 



still the hardiest soldiers of Europe, the most unconquerable by hard- 

 ships, wounds and hunger. The burden-carriers of Constantinople are 

 still the stoutest men of our latter-day world. We might as well im- 

 peach the degeneracy of the Circassian highlanders, who resisted the 

 power of the Russian monarchy for sixty-five years, and in their last 

 stronghold stood at bay with drawn hunting knives — after blunting 

 their sabres and exhausting a stock of ammunition purchased by the 

 sacrifice of their herds and harvests. For these heroic mountaineers, 

 too, were Mongols, kinsmen of the martial Turkomans and chivalrous 

 Magyars. The Turanian race — a synonym of the Pan-Mongolians — 

 comprises as many different types as the Aryans and Semites taken 

 together. 



In 1863 some twenty clans of the vanquished highlanders left the 

 Caucasus en masse to settle in the mountains of the Turkish province 

 of Adrianople. They will share the fate of their protectors, and may 

 soon be obliged to follow their flight across the Hellespont. 



But the final expulsion of the West Mongols will, after all, mean 

 only that the Caucasians have recovered lost ground, and freed at least 

 Europe from an intrusive tribe of their most persistent and most for- 

 midable rivals. 



