210 THE HUNS OF ATTILA. 



so often ravaged the plains of the south. Here were produced 

 the prolific swarms of the Calrnucks, or Black Huns, that men- 

 aced and overran the Chinese borders from a period of twelve 

 centuries before the birth of Christ. From the high regions of 

 the north came also the White Huns in later times, a polite but 

 warlike people, whose monuments of victory dotted the plains 

 from the Caspian Sea to the mouth of the Indus. 



Beneath the metalline mountains of the Altai, the race of 

 the Turks forged at their anvils, the basest slaves of the great 

 Khan of the Moguls. About the middle of the sixth century of 

 our era, it suddenly came into the minds of these stalwart smiths 

 that they might just as well use the weapons they were forging, 

 as to hand them over to their task-masters to use. And there- 

 upon they rose up against their oppressors, established themselves 

 in their place, and forthwith commenced a series of conquests 

 which ended in the founding of the grandest empire of the 

 middle ages. 



In the twelfth century the terrible Zengis Khan led from these 

 Highlands the myriads of the Moguls, and w^e are told that the 

 crowded hosts of the Southrons were mown like hemp before 

 his conquering blades. A world of shepherd barbarians bowed 

 to his sway, and the Mogul dynasties were seated on the thrones 

 of Asia. 



But we return to the race that has been styled the Black Huns 

 of Tartary, whose character and wanderings and conquests we 

 have undertaken to present before you this evening. Perched 

 then on their mountain-girt uplands, twelve centuries before the 

 Christian era, we find this rugged and untamed race becoming 

 the terror and the despoilers of Asia. A nation of herdsmen, 

 they subsisted almost entirely on the milk and flesh of their 

 flocks and herds, as also of their horses. Their habitations were 

 rude tents, or at best small huts which might easily be mounted 

 on wagons, always ready, whenever choice or necessity bade 

 them, to move to other pasture grounds. Their sports were the 

 boldest feats of horsemanship or the dangerous chase of the bear 

 and the boar. Constant practice had seated them so firmly on 

 horseback that rider and horse seemed to have grown into one 



