A GLIMPSE OF HUMAN LIFE. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE INHABITANTS OF THE STEPPES : TARTARS, COSSACKS, KALMUKS, 



KIRGHIZ, MONGOLS. 



THE Steppes of Tartary and Mongolia, interrupted, says Humboldt,* 

 by chains of mountains of various aspects, separate the ruder peoples 

 of Northern Asia from the primitive races, which have been for ages 

 civilized, of Hindostan and Thibet. Their existence has influenced 

 the destinies of mankind in various important ways. They have 

 rolled back the populations towards the south, and more than 

 the Himalaya, more than the snow-crowned peaks of Serinagur and 

 Goorkha, have raised an obstacle to the alliances of peoples, while 

 opposing, in the north of Asia, insuperable barriers to the refinement 

 of manners and the genius of the arts. 



But it is not only as barriers that History should regard the 

 plains of Central Asia ; they have several times let loose on earth a 

 torrent of calamity and devastation. The pastoral races of the 

 Steppes Mongols, Getse, Alans, and Huns have convulsed the 

 world. If, in the course of ages, intellectual culture has directed its 

 course from east to west, like the vivifying light of the sun, Bar- 

 barism at a later period has followed in the same track, when 

 threatening to plunge all Europe into darkness. A people of tawny 

 shepherds, Tou-Kin (that is to say, Turkish) in origin, the Hioung- 

 Nou, inhabited, under tents of skin, the elevated Steppe of the Gobi. 

 Long formidable to the Chinese power, a horde of the Hioung-Nou 

 was driven back towards the south into Central Asia. The impulse 

 which they gave spread uninterruptedly even into the native country 

 of the Fins, on the borders of the Oural, and thence the Huns, the 

 Avars, the Chasurs, and various mixtures of Asiatic races, poured 

 forth in furious violence. The Hunnish hosts first appeared on the 



* Humboldt, " Ansichten der Natur," vol. i. 



