LXXII 



WHEN, in coming from India, you reach the land of the 

 Mongol, you are first of all struck by the sturdiness of the 

 people. The Malay Peninsula shows you a populatipn of 

 athletes. Nowhere outside of Japan have I seen* such a 

 collection of muscular legs ; the 'ricksha men have an 

 abnormal underpinning, and the naked-torsoed coolies are 

 a pleasure to behold, though perhaps they lack the thor- 

 ough-bred type which you find in our own men in training, 

 with its exceptional depth of lung-space. It is fortunate 

 for Europe that the Turanian race is conservative in- 

 stead of enterprising. If, with its numbers and physique 

 and habits of obedience, it had the colonizing spirit and 

 good leadership, it would sweep over Europe like an ava- 

 lanche. But it is scarcely possible that a people which 

 for so many thousand years has been content to starve at 

 home will seek an outlet across the tremendous mountain 

 barriers of Central Asia. 



The bullock as the horse of the country disappears after 

 you round the Malay Peninsula, and we are greeted by 

 the same little pony which has excited our admiration in 

 the Himalayas, and in Burmah and Pegu. When you 

 reach Cochin China, or Annam, or Tonquin (I am not 

 enough of a geographer or a politician to tell where one 

 ends and the other begins, for in territorial divisions na- 

 tions seem nowadays to be playing at hide-and-seek all 

 over the world), you run across a race of men which needs 

 no beast of burden. Indeed, they have not the where- 



