290 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



250,000 strong, covering the inert mass of 300,000,000 subjects, 

 with the aid of 800,000 policemen, denominated infantry, and 

 an enormous crowd of civilians and satellites, all intended for 

 internal rule, and incapable of external vigor. 



They are, to all appearance, the first who came from the 

 remote north-east, after the Japanese and Chinese. Of the 

 Turkish stems, some have acquired a Caucasian form of head, 

 such as the Osmanlis and the so-called Russian Taht 

 ing in towns ; but the nomadic tribes, the Nogais, Kirguise, 

 Turkoman, and Jakoutsk, retain the original structure of tbe 

 Mongolian form, while the Turks further betray their hybrid 

 cbaracter by the number of Sanscrit words found in the lan- 

 guage they speak, which, since they were not among the 

 ancient invaders of India, must have been incorporated on the 

 north side of the great central mountain systems of Asia, and, 

 consequently, from a Caucasian people, whose tongue was a 

 dialect of this great language, proving that it had a national 

 existence much further to the north than is commonly sur- 

 mised. The name Turks, Toorkees, may designate mountain 

 men, for it agrees with their earliest history, as given in the 

 Chinese annals, according to Klaproth, Abel Remusat, and 

 others, who assert that they descend from the Hiong-nou, a 

 people whose capital was Kantcheou, in Tangut, and that they 

 came down the snowy passes of Tang-nu and the great Altai, 

 upon the west, probably by the upper Irtish and the affluents 

 of the Jaxartes. The same annals, however, pretend that 

 they were seated on the northern flanks of the mountain 

 ranges, which may refer to their remoter habitation on the 

 Irtish, but not near the Shensi and Shansi provinces, unless it 

 was after the Yuchi nations were ejected ; for these were still 

 opposed to the Mongols, in those very regions ; and the abun- 

 dance of local names now remaining in Thibet shows that Cau- 

 casians occupied a great portion of the high land plateau to a 

 late period. It must have taken ages to dislodge tribes, vhich 

 we find in subsequent periods making a prodigious resistance ; 



