CONTRAST BETWEEN CHINESE AND NOMADS. i8i 



the same Great Wall which we saw at Kalgan. 

 Here as well as there this wall separates the culture 

 and settled life of China Proper from the deserts of 

 the high plateaus which are habitable only by a 

 nomad pastoral people. This contrast between two 

 physically distinct parts of the surface of the globe 

 — on the one side the warm, fruitful, well-watered 

 Chinese lowlands intersected by mountain chains, 

 on the other, the lofty, cold, and desert plateau — 

 has influenced the fortunes of the nations inhabiting 

 them.^ As they differed in their mode of life and 

 character, so they hated and lived apart from each 

 other. Just as the dull, hard life of the nomad, with 

 its many privations, was foreign and hateful to the 

 Chinese, so the nomad on his side looked Avith con- 

 tempt at the tiresome industry of his agricultural 

 neighbour, and valued his wild liberty far higher than 

 all the blessings of the universe. Hence arose a 

 marked contrast between the characters of both 

 nations. The painstaking Chinese, who in long-for- 

 gotten ages attained a comparatively high although 



Christian era established themselves here, in order to have ready 

 access to the fertile lands of Shensi. In the middle ages (tenth to 

 thirteenth century), it formed part of the kingdom of Tangut, the 

 capital of which was at Ninghia, on the Yellow River ; and when 

 Chinghiz-Khan conquered that kingdom it became a part of the 

 Mongol Empire. It is obscure ho\v the tribes occupying this territory 

 got the name of Ordos. That title was specifically applied to the 

 body of Mongols established in eight white ordus or' encampments 

 beside the sepulchre of Chinghiz, and a migration of their descendants 

 is supposed by Ritter to have caused the transfer of the name to the 

 territory, now so called. (Ritter, Asien, i. 505 ; Timk. ii. 266, 

 Schmidt^ — Y. 



1 This idea is fully developed in Ritter's classical work, 'Erdkunde 

 von Asien,' translated into Russian by Semenoff. 



