506 THE YELLOW RACES. 



yellow races in a widely extended area. There are indeed certain 

 facts which, justify us in supposing that one of these ancient, but now 

 extinct races, knew the vanished mammalia of the valley of the Ehone, 

 and that other old Mongolians lived in the east of Europe and in Upper 

 Asia at a certainly less remote, but still very ancient epoch. 



Restricted from the beginning to a rather septentrional habitat, the 

 yellow peoples remained unknown to the ancient Egyptians until the 

 time of the invasion of the Shepherd race, certain leaders of whom, 

 depicted on the monuments of San or the Fayoum, bear truly Mongo- 

 lian features. In Mesopotamia they may have furnished the elements 

 of one of the two ethnical groups which in the dawn of history com- 

 peted for preeminence under the names of Accad and Sumer. Accad, 

 whose language is akin to the so-called Turanian idioms, ruled at 

 Babylon, and displays on the few monuments on which its image is 

 preserved very striking features. 



The Mongolian features continue a process of exaggeration on cer- 

 tain more recent figures, where we see, as, for instance, at Behistun, 

 among the prisoners of Darius, genuine Mongols with turned-up noses, 

 delicate mustaches, high and prominent cheek bones, etc. Still other 

 Mongolian faces are represented in the famous ruins of Sanchi (Malva), 

 etc. We must, nevertheless, come down as far as Attila's invasion 

 to collect some fragments of description, in which the Hun may 

 appear with increased horror, owing to the fright with which he had 

 filled the Christian world. Forma brevi, lato pectore, capite grandi- 

 ori, minutis oculis, barba rara, simo naso, tetro colore, originis suae 

 signa restituens — thus writes Jordanes, describing Attila himself. 



Many other historians, both Eastern and Western, have since that 

 time depicted the immigrant hordes who passed through the breaches 

 made by the Huns and opened for themselves a road to the very heart 

 of the Empire: Avars, Chazars, Komans, and those Hungarians 

 and Bulgarians, the fathers of the ogres of our legends, the btigaboos 

 of popular speech. None of these portaits is more striking than that 

 which is inserted by Mathieu Paris in his Grande Ohronique. The 

 clerk Yvon, of Narbonne, wrote from Neustadt, in 1243, to Girauld, 

 archbishop of Bordeaux, to inform him of the devastations of the 

 barbarians, and thus described these invaders, who became ever after 

 known under the name of Tartars : 



"Their breast," he says, "is solid and robust, habent autem pectora 

 dura et robusta; their face is lean and pale, fades macras et pallidas; 

 their shoulders are straight and high, scapulas rigidas et erectas; a short 

 and turned-up nose, nasos distortos et breves; the chin is prominent and 

 pointed, menta prominentia et acuta; the upper jaw is low and deep, 

 superiorem mandibulum humilem et profundum; their teeth are long and 

 few, denies longos et raros; the eyelids hang from the eyebrows down 

 to the nose, palpebras a crinibus usque ad nasum protensas; their eyes 

 are mobile and black, oculos inconstantes et nigros; their look is a side- 

 way and fierce look, aspectus obliquos et torvos; their extremities are all 

 bone and nerve, extremitates ossosas et nervosas; finally, their thighs 



