66 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



II. Turk Nations. 1. Osnianli-Turks. 2. Kuzabbashi. 



The Turk stock is allied to the Ugrian. 1 It is one of the most important in 

 Asia, both with respect to its past history and its future prospects. More highly 

 endowed, and more energetic in impulse than other Asiatic nomades, their migra- 

 tory movements, and military and civil achievements have been more conspicuous 

 than those of other nomadic nations. The principal subdivisions of the Turk 

 stock are the Kirgiz, the Bashkers, and the Nogays, on the north and west ; the 

 Yakuts, or Sokhalars, detached geographically and established on the Lena within 

 the Arctic circle; the Osmanli-Turks on the west; and the inhabitants of Bokhara, 

 Chinese Tartary, and Turkistan on the east and south. 2 The differences among 

 the several dialects of these nations are said to be less than among the Ugrian. 



It is thus seen that the Uralian family, in its several branches, occupies an immense, 

 a compact, and a continuous area, extending from the Arctic Sea to the Mediter- 

 ranean and Caspian, and from China and Mongolia to the territories of the Aryan 

 family. 3 This fact is equally true of all the great linguistic families of mankind. 

 Reasons for this are found in the causes which control the migrations of nations, 



1 " Those writers, in short, who adopt the nomenclature of Blumenbach, place the Ugrians and 

 Turks in the same class, that class being the Mongol. So that, in the eyes of the anatomist, the 

 Turks and the Ugrians belong to the same great division of mankind." Latham's Native Races of 

 the Russian Empire, p. 30. 



a " It suggests the idea of the enormous area appropriated to the Turkish stock. It is perhaps 

 the largest in the world, measured by the mere extent of surface ; not, however, largest in respect 

 to the number of inhabitants it contains. In respect to its physical conditions, its range of difference 

 is large. The bulk of its surface is a plateau the elevated table-land of Central Asia so that, 

 though lying within the same parallels as a great part of the same area, its climates are more extreme. 

 But then its outlying portions are the very shores of the icy sea ; whilst there are other Turks as 

 far south as Egypt." Native Races of Russian Empire, p. 29. 



8 Lamartine describes the prairie or table-lands of Asia between the Caspian Sea and the frontiers 

 of China, the home country of the pastoral tribes of the Turks, as follows. " This basin, which ex- 

 tends, uncultivated, from the frontiers of China to Thibet, and from the extremity of Thibet to the 

 Caspian Sea, produces, since the known origin of the world, but men and flocks. It is the largest 

 pasture-field that the globe has spread beneath the foot of the human race, to multiply the milk 

 which qoenches man's thirst, the ox that feeds him, the horse that carries him, the camel that follows 

 him, bearing his family and his tent, the sheep that clothes him with its fleece. Not a tree is to be 

 seen there to cast its shade upon the earth, or supply a covert for fierce or noxious animals. Grass 

 is the sole vegetable. Nourished by a soil without stones, and of great depth, like the slimy and 

 saline bottom of some ocean, emptied by a cataclysm ; watered by the oozings of the Alps of Thibet, 

 the loftiest summits of Asia ; preserved during the long winters by a carpet of snow, propitious to 

 vegetation ; warmed in spring by a sun without a cloud ; sustained by a cool temperature that never 

 mounts to the height of parching, grass finds there, as it were, its natural climate. It supplies there 

 all other plants, all other fruits, all other crops. It attracted thither the ruminant animals the 

 ruminant animals attracted man. They feed, they fatten, they give their milk, they grow their hair, 

 their fur, or their wool for their masters. After death they bequeath their skin for his domestic 

 uses. Man, in such countries, needs no cultivation to give him food and drink, nor fixed dwellings, 

 nor fields inclosed and divided for appropriation. The immeasurable spaces over which he is obliged 

 to follow the peregrinations of his moving property, leads him in its train. He takes with him but 

 his tent, which is carried from steppe to steppe, according as the grass is browsed upon a certain 

 zone around him ; or he harnesses his ox on to his leather-covered wagon, the movable mansion of 

 his family." History of Turkey, I, 181 (Book II, S. xix.) Appleton's edition, 1355. 



