THE KIREI OF THE ALTAI 353 



fighting qualities, formed valuable contingents to the 

 Mongol armies as they moved westwards. 



After this the nomadic Turkish tribes, as represented 

 by the Kirghiz and Kasaks, became more or less in- 

 dependent, until recently when Russia and China com- 

 pelled them to accept the jurisdiction of their respective 

 Governments,— the Kirghiz, with their kinsmen the 

 Kasaks,^ being now scattered over wide areas of Central 

 Asia from the Altai Mountains to the Sea of Aral. Of 

 all the different tribes of Kirghiz, however, the Kirei 

 hold first place in point of historical interest. Long ago 

 they claimed attention as being an isolated Christian 

 tribe in the middle of pagan Asia, the subjects of the 

 mysterious Prester John, — a Christian monarch who was 

 not only credited with vast wealth and power, but was 

 ruler of a kingdom of great size. No other tribe has 

 created such excitement in the West nor has been en- 

 dowed with such a wonderful reputation as that of the 

 Kirei at the end of the eleventh century. It is this par- 

 ticular period of their history that excites our interest, 

 and makes this account of them, at the present day, 

 of unusual value. We saw them in the very heart of 

 their own territory, we crossed and re-crossed their 

 country, and met with them both in their mountain- 

 pastures and on the sand-dunes of the low-lying plains ; 

 we kept constantly before us the records of their past, 

 and this intensified and doubled the curiosity which 

 their encampments would in any case have elicited. 



I will briefly recount the romance of the Kirei — as 

 subjects of Prester John — and then state what appear 



^ The true Kirghiz, also called Buruts, Kara-Kirghiz or mountain- 

 Kirghiz, inhabit as a rule the highland region, such as the Pamirs, parts 

 of the Tian Shan, and the Altai. The Kasaks, who are an offshoot from 

 the original stem, hold the lowlands and plains. 



