MONGOL COWARDICE. 6i 



winter, making upwards of 3,000 miles. As soon as 

 you set him to do other work, apparently much 

 lighter, but to which he is unaccustomed, the result 

 is very different. Although as hard as nails, he 

 cannot walk fifteen or twenty miles without suffering 

 great fatigue ; if he pass the night on the damp 

 ground he will catch cold as easily as any fine gentle- 

 man, and, deprived of his brick-tea, he will never 

 cease grumbling. 



The Mongol is a slave to habit. He has 

 no energy to meet and overcome difficulties ; he 

 will try and avoid, but never conquer them. He 

 wants the elastic, manly spirit of the European, 

 ready for any emergency, and willing to struggle 

 against adversity and gain the victory in the end. 

 His is the stolid conservatism of the Asiatic, passive, 

 apathetic and lifeless. 



Cowardice is another striking trait of their cha- 

 racter. Leaving out of the question the Chinese 

 Mongols, whose martial spirit and energy has been 

 completely stamped out, the Khalka people are 

 vastly inferior to their ancestors of the times of 

 Chinghiz and Okkodai.^ Two centuries of Chinese 

 sway,^ during which their warlike disposition has 

 been systematically extinguished and suffered to 

 stagnate in the dull round of nomad existence, have 



^ Okkodai, the third son and successor of Chinghiz-Khan, estab- 

 lished his capital at Karakorum, and founded the walls and palace in 

 1234. See ' Marco Polo,' 2nd ed., i. p. 228. — M. 



2 That is to say, from the time when the Khalkas became subject 

 to China in 1691, during the reign of Kanghi. Western Mongolia, 

 the so-called Dzungaria, was conquered by the Chinese in 1 756. 



