Samdadchiemba, whose eyes were very sharp, and accustomed to the desert, a.s.sured us that the creature was either a dog or a stray calf.
Our animals were, at the very least, as absorbed with the subject as ourselves. The horse and the mule pointed their ears, and dug up the earth with their hoofs, while the camels, with outstretched necks and glaring eyes, did not for an instant remove their gaze from the spot whence these wild cries issued.
In order to ascertain precisely with what creature we had to do, we diluted a handful of meal in a wooden dish, and placing this at the entrance of the tent, withdrew inside. Soon we saw the animal slowly advance, then stop, then advance again. At last it came to the dish, and with the most remarkable rapidity, lapped up the supper we had prepared for it. We now saw that it was a dog of immense size. After having thoroughly licked and polished the empty dish, it lay down, without ceremony, at the entrance of the tent; and we forthwith followed its example, glad to have found a protector in the apprehended foe.
Next morning, upon awaking, we were able to examine at leisure the dog which, after having so alarmed us, had so unreservedly attached itself to us. Its colour was red, its size immense; its excessive meagreness showed that it had been wandering about homeless for some time past. A dislocated leg, which it dragged along the ground, communicated to it a sort of swinging motion, which added to its formidable effect. But it was especially alarming when it sent forth its loud, fierce voice.
Whenever we heard it, we instinctively looked at the animal whence it proceeded, to see whether it really belonged to the canine race.
We resumed our route, and the new Arsalan accompanied us, its general position being a few paces in advance of the caravan, as though to show us the way, with which it appeared to be tolerably familiar.
After two days" journey we reached the foot of a chain of mountains, the summits of which were lost in the clouds. We set about ascending them, however, courageously, for we hoped that beyond them we should find the Yellow River. That day"s journey was very painful, especially to the camels, for every step was upon sharp, rugged rock; and their feet, accordingly, were very speedily bleeding. We ourselves, however, were too absorbed with the strange, fantastic aspect of the mountains we were traversing to think of the toil they occasioned us.
In the hollows and chasms of the precipices formed by these lofty mountains, you see nothing but great heaps of mica and laminated stones, broken, bruised, and in some cases absolutely pulverised. This wreck of slate and schist must have been brought into these abysses by some deluge, for it in no way belongs to the mountains themselves, which are of granite. As you approach the summits, the mountains a.s.sume forms more and more fantastic. You see great heaps of rock piled one upon the other, and apparently cemented together. These rocks are almost entirely encrusted with sh.e.l.ls and the remains of a plant resembling sea weed; but that which is most remarkable is that these granitic ma.s.ses are cut and torn and worn in every direction, presenting a ramification of holes and cavities, meandering in a thousand complicated turns and twists, so that you might imagine all the upper portion of each mountain to have been subjected to the slow and destructive action of immense worms. Sometimes in the granite you find deep impressions, that seem the moulds of monsters, whose forms they still closely retain.
As we gazed upon all these phenomena, it seemed to us that we were travelling in the bed of some exhausted ocean. Everything tended to the belief that these mountains had undergone the gradual action of the sea.
It is impossible to attribute all you see there to the influence of mere rain, or still less to the inundations of the Yellow River, which, however prodigious they may be, can never have attained so great an elevation. The geologists who affirm that the deluge took place by sinking, and not by a depolarization of the earth, might probably find in these mountains good arguments in favour of their system.
On reaching the crest of these mountains we saw beneath us the Yellow River, rolling its waves majestically from south to north. It was now near noon, and we hoped that same evening to pa.s.s the river, and sleep in one of the inns of the little town of Che-Tsui-Dze, which we perceived on the slope of a hill beyond the river.
We occupied the whole afternoon in descending the rugged mountain, selecting as we went, the places right and left that seemed more practicable than the rest. At length we arrived, and before nightfall, on the banks of the Yellow River, our pa.s.sage across which was most successfully effected. In the first place, the Mongol Tartars who rented the ferry oppressed our purse less direfully than the Chinese ferry-men had done. Next, the animals got into the boat without any difficulty.
The only grievance was that we had to leave our lame dog on the bank, for the Mongols would not admit it on any terms, insisting upon the rule that all dogs must swim across the river, the boat being destined solely for men, or for animals that cannot swim. We were fain to submit to the prejudice.
On the other side of the Yellow River we found ourselves in China, and bade adieu for awhile to Tartary, to the desert, and to the nomadic life.
[Picture: Chinese Statue]
[Picture: Chinese and Tartar arms]
CHAPTER XI.
Sketch of the Tartar Nations.
The Tartars, descended from the ancient Scythians, have preserved to this day the dexterity of their ancestors in archery and horsemanship. The early part of their history is veiled in obscurity, enveloped as they are by the wonders and prodigies of the exploits of their first conqueror, Okhous-Han, who seems to be the Madyes of Herodotus. This ill.u.s.trious leader of the Scythian hordes carried his arms into Syria, and reached even the confines of Egypt.
The Chinese annals frequently mention certain nomad tribes, which they call Hioung-Nou, and which are no other than the Huns. These wandering and warlike tribes gradually extended themselves, and finished by covering the immense deserts of Tartary from east to west. Thenceforward they made continual incursions on their neighbours, and on several occasions made attacks on the frontiers of the empire. It was on such an occasion that Thsin-Chi-Hoang-Ti had the Great Wall built in the year 213 B.C. About 134 B.C. the Huns, under the conduct of Lao-Chan, their emperor, made an attack on the Tartars Youei-Tchi (the Getae), who dwelt on the confines of the province of Chen-Si. After a series of long and terrible conflicts, Lao-Chan defeated them, slew their chief, and made of his head a drinking cup, which he wore suspended from his girdle. The Getae did not choose to submit to the victors, and preferred going elsewhere in search of another country. They divided into two princ.i.p.al bands. One advanced towards the north-west, and took possession of the plains situated upon the banks of the river Ili, beyond the glaciers of the Moussour mountains; this is that part of Tartary which is now called the Tourgout. The other division marched southwards, a.s.sociated with it in its course several other tribes, and reached the regions watered by the Indus. There it laid waste the kingdom founded by the successors of Alexander, strove for some time against the Parthians, and finished by establishing itself in Bactriana. The Greeks called these Tartar tribes Indo-Scythians.
Meanwhile divisions arose among the Huns; and the Chinese, ever politic and cunning, took advantage of this circ.u.mstance to enfeeble them.
Towards the year 48 of our era, the Tartar empire was divided into northern and southern. Under the dynasty of Han, the Northern Huns were completely defeated by the Chinese armies. They were obliged to abandon the regions wherein they had settled, and proceeded in large numbers towards the west, to the borders of the Caspian Sea; here they spread themselves over the countries watered by the Volga, and round the Palus Maeotis.
They commenced in 376 their formidable irruptions upon the Roman empire.
They began by subduing the territory of the Alani, a nomad and pastoral people like themselves; some of these sought refuge in the Circa.s.sian mountains, others migrated further west, and finally settled on the sh.o.r.es of the Danube. Later, they drove before them the Suevi, the Goths, the Gepidae, and the Vandals, and with these advanced to ravage Germany, in the beginning of the fifth century. These large hordes of barbarians resembling waves, one driven on by the other, thus formed, in their destructive course, a fearful torrent, which finally inundated Europe.
The Southern Huns, who had remained in Tartary, were for a long time weakened by the dispersion of their northern countrymen; but they recovered, by insensible degrees, and again became terrible to the Chinese; though they did not acquire a political and historical importance till the time of the famous Tchinggiskhan, towards the close of the twelfth century.
The power of the Tartars, long confined within the desert steppes of Mongolia, broke at length its bounds, and innumerable armies might be seen descending from the lofty table-lands of Central Asia, and precipitating themselves with fury on horrified nations: Tchinggiskhan carried pillage and death even to the most remote regions. China, Tartary, India, Persia, Syria, Muscovy, Poland, Hungary, Austria,-all these countries successively felt the terrible blows of the victorious Tartar. France, Italy, and the other regions further west, escaped with their fear.
In the year 1260 of our era, Khan-Khoubilai, grandson of Tchinggis, who had commenced the conquest of China, succeeded in subduing that vast empire. It was the first time that it had pa.s.sed under the yoke of foreigners. Khoubilai died at Peking in the year 1294, aged eighty. His empire was, without dispute, the largest that had ever existed. Chinese geographers state that, under the Mongol dynasty of the Youen, the empire northwards went beyond the In-Chan mountains; westwards it extended beyond the Gobi or sandy desert; to the east, it was terminated by the countries situated on the left of the river Siao; and in the southern direction it reached the sh.o.r.es of the Youe Sea. It is obvious that this description does not include the countries tributary to the empire.
Thibet, Turkestan, Muscovy, Siam, Cochin China, Tonking, and Corea, acknowledged the supremacy of the Grand Khan of the Tartars, and faithfully paid him tribute. Even European nations were, from time to time, insolently summoned to acknowledge the Mongol supremacy. Haughty and threatening letters were sent to the Pope, to the King of France, to the Emperor, commanding them to send as tribute the revenues of their states to the depths of Tartary. The descendants of Tchinggiskhan, who reigned in Muscovy, Persia, Bactriana, and Sogdiana, received invest.i.ture from the Emperor of Peking, and undertook nothing of importance without first giving him notice. The diplomatic papers which the King of Persia sent, in the thirteenth century, to Philip the Fair, are a proof of this dependance. On these precious monuments, which are preserved to this day in the archives of France, are seals in Chinese characters, which testify the supremacy of the Grand Khan of Peking over the sovereigns of Persia.
The conquests of Tchinggiskhan and of his successors; and, in later times, those of Tamerlan or Timour, which transferred the seat of the Mongol empire to Samarcand, contributed, in as great, and perhaps a greater degree than the Crusades, to renew the intercourse of Europe with the most distant states of the East, and favoured the discoveries which have been so useful to the progress of the arts, of the sciences, and of navigation.
On this subject, we will quote in this place, an interesting pa.s.sage from the Memoirs which M. Abel Remusat published in 1824, on the political relations of the Christian princes, and particularly of the Kings of France with the Mongol Emperors:-
"The lieutenants of Tchinggiskhan, and of his first successors, on arriving in Western Asia, did not seek at first, to contract any alliance there. The princes, whose domains they entered, silently permitted the impost of a tribute; the rest were required to submit.
The Georgians and Armenians were among the first. The Franks of Syria, the Kings of Hungary, the Emperor himself, had to repel their insolent demands. The Pope was not exempted, by the supremacy he enjoyed in relation to the other Christian princes; nor the King of France, by the high renown he enjoyed throughout the East. The terror which the Tartars inspired, precluded a fitting answer to their demands. The course resorted to was conciliation, the seeking their alliance, and the endeavouring to rouse them against the Moslems. The latter attempt would scarcely have been successful, had not the Christians in the East, who, by adhesion as va.s.sals, had obtained credit at the courts of their generals and their princes, zealously employed themselves in the matter. The Mongols were induced at last to undertake war against the Sultan of Egypt. Such were the relations with this nation during the first period, which lasted from 1224 to 1262.
"In the second period, the Khalifat was destroyed; a Mongol princ.i.p.ality was founded in Persia: it bordered on the states of the Sultan of Egypt. A sanguinary rivalry arose between the two countries, which the Eastern Christians did all in their power to irritate. The Mongol empire was divided. Those of Persia had need of auxiliaries, which their Armenian va.s.sals procured for them: these auxiliaries were the Franks. From this time, their power declined more and more; and ere long it was annihilated. Fresh crusades might restore it. The Mongols excited these in the West. They joined their exhortations to those of the Georgians, Armenians, of the wreck of the crusaders, who had taken refuge in Cyprus, and to those of the sovereign pontiffs. The first Tartars had commenced by threats; the last came to offers, and even descended to supplications. Twenty amba.s.sadors were sent by them to Italy, France, and England; and it was no fault of theirs that the fire of the holy wars was not rekindled, and extended over Europe and Asia. These diplomatic attempts, the recital of which forms, so to speak, an epilogue to the transmarine expeditions, scarcely noticed by those who have written their history, and, indeed, unknown to most of them, would deserve, perhaps, our fixed attention. We should have to collect facts, resolve difficulties, and place in a clear point of view the political system to which the negociations with the Tartars belong.
Specialties of this cla.s.s could not be appreciated, whilst they were considered isolately, and without examining them one with another.
We might doubt, with Voltaire and De Guignes, that a king of the Tartars had met Saint Louis with offers of service. This fact might seem not tenable, and its recital paradoxical. Yet such scepticism would be unreasonable, after we had seen that the Mongols had acted upon that principle for fifty years; and when we are a.s.sured, by reading contemporary writings, and by the inspection of original monuments, that this conduct was natural on their part, that it entered into their views, that it conformed to their interests, and that it is explained by the common rules of reason and policy.
"The series of events which are connected with these negociations serves to complete the history of the Crusades; but the part they may have had in the great moral revolution, which soon followed the relations which they occasioned between people hitherto unknown to each other, are facts of an importance more general and still more worthy of our particular attention. Two systems of civilization had become established at the two extremities of the ancient continent, as the effect of independent causes, without communication, and consequently without mutual influence. All at once the events of war and political combinations bring into contact these two great bodies, long strangers to each other. The formal interviews of amba.s.sadors are not the only occasions which brought them together. Other occasions more private, but also more efficacious, were established by imperceptible, but innumerable ramifications, by the travels of a host of individuals, attracted to the two extremities of the earth, with commercial views, in the train of amba.s.sadors or armies. The irruption of the Mongols, by throwing everything into agitation, neutralized distance, filled up intervals, and brought the nations together; the events of war transported millions of individuals to an immense distance from the places where they were born. History has recorded the voyages of kings, of amba.s.sadors, of missionaries.
Sempad, the Orbelian; Hayton, King of Armenia; the two Davids, Kings of Georgia; and several others were led by political motives to the depths of Asia. Yeroslaf, Grand Duke of Sousdal and va.s.sal of the Mongols, like the other Russian princes, came to Kara-Koroum, where he died of poison, it was said, administered by the Empress herself, the mother of the Emperor Gayouk. Many monks, Italians, French, Flemings, were charged with diplomatic missions to the Grand Khan.
Mongols of distinction came to Rome, Barcelona, Valencia, Lyons, Paris, London, Northampton; and a Franciscan of the kingdom of Naples was Archbishop of Peking. His successor was a professor of theology of the Faculty of Paris. But how many others, less celebrated, were led in the train of those men, either as slaves, or impelled by the desire of gain, or by curiosity, to countries. .h.i.therto unexplored.
Chance has preserved the names of a few. The first envoy who came on the part of the Tartars to the King of Hungary was an Englishman, banished from his country for certain crimes, and who, after having wandered throughout Asia, had finally taken service among the Mongols. A Flemish Cordelier met in the depth of Tartary a woman of Metz, named Paquette, who had been carried away from Hungary, a Parisian goldsmith whose brother was established in Paris on the Grand Pont, and a young man from the environs of Rouen, who had been present at the capture of Belgrade; he saw there also Russians, Hungarians, and Flemings. A singer, named Robert, after travelling through the whole of Eastern Asia, returned to find a grave in the Cathedral of Chartres. A Tartar was a helmet-maker in the armies of Philip the Fair. Jean de Plan-Carpin met, near Gayouk, with a Russian gentleman, whom he calls Temer, who served as interpreter.
Several merchants of Breslau, Poland, and Austria, accompanied him in his journey to Tartary; others returned with him through Russia; these were Genoese, Pisans, and two merchants of Venice whom chance had brought to Bokhara. They were induced to go in the suite of a Mongol amba.s.sador, whom Houlagou had sent to Khoubilai. They sojourned several years in China and Tartary, took letters from the Grand Khan to the Pope, and returned to the Grand Khan, bringing with them the son of one of their number, the celebrated Marco-Polo, and quitted once more the Court of Khoubilai to return to Venice.
Travels of this kind were not less frequent in the succeeding age.
Of this number are those of John de Mandeville, an English physician; of Oderic of Friuli; of Pegoletti; of Guillaume de Boutdeselle, and several others. We may be certain that the journeys which have been recorded are but a small portion of those which were performed, and that there were at that period more people able to make a long journey than to write an account of it. Many of these adventurers must have established themselves and died in the countries they went to visit. Others returned to their country as obscure as when they left it; but with their imaginations full of what they had seen, relating it all to their families and friends, and doubtless with exaggerations; but leaving around them, amidst ridiculous fables, a few useful recollections and traditions productive of advantage.
Thus were sown in Germany, in Italy, in France, in the monasteries, among the n.o.bility, and even in the lowest grades of society, precious seeds destined to bud at a later period. All these obscure travellers, carrying the arts of their native country to distant lands, brought back other information about these no less precious, and thus effected, unconsciously, exchanges more productive of good than all those of commerce. By this means not merely the traffic in silks, in porcelains, in commodities from Hindostan, was made more extensive and more practicable, opening new routes to industry and commerce; but, that which was far more valuable, foreign manners and customs of before unknown nations, extraordinary productions, were presented to the European mind, confined, since the fall of the Roman empire, within too narrow a circle. Men began to have an idea that, after all, there was something worthy of notice in the finest, the most populous and the most anciently civilized of the four quarters of the world. People began to think of studying the arts, the religions, the languages of the nations who inhabited it, and there was even a proposition to establish a professorship of the Tartar language in the University of Paris. Romantic narratives, reduced by discussion within reasonable proportions, diffused in all directions juster and more varied information: the world seemed opening towards the East. Geography made immense strides, and ardour of discovery became the new form a.s.sumed by the adventurous spirit of Europeans.
The idea of another hemisphere ceased, as soon as our own became better known, to present itself to the mind as a paradox dest.i.tute of all probability, and it was in going in search of the Zipangri of Marco-Polo that Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.
"I should make too great a digression, were I to investigate what were in the East the effects of the Mongol irruption, the destruction of the Khalifat, the extermination of the Bulgarians, of the Romans, and other northern nations. The decline of the population of Upper Asia, so favourable to the reaction by which the Russians, hitherto the va.s.sals of the Tartars, subdued in their turn all the nomads of the North; the submission of China to a foreign yoke; the definitive establishment of the Indian religion in Thibet and Tartary; all these events deserve to be studied in detail. I will not even pause to inquire what might have been the results, to the nations of Eastern Asia, of the intercourse which they had with the West. The introduction of the Indian numerals into China, a knowledge of the astronomical system of the Moslems, the translation of the New Testament and the Psalms into the Mongol language, executed by the Latin Archbishop of _Khan Balik_ (Peking), the foundation of the lamanical hierarchy, framed in imitation of the pontifical court, and produced by the fusion effected between the remnants of the Nestorianism established in Tartary and the dogmas of the Buddhists; such were all the innovations of which there are any traces in Eastern Asia, and therewith the commerce of the Franks has very little to do. The Asiatics are punished for their contempt of the knowledge of Europeans, by the limited results which that very scorn enables them to derive from it. To confine myself to what concerns the people of the West, and to attempt to justify what I said at the commencement of this Memoir, that the effects of the communications with the nations of Upper Asia, in the thirteenth century, had contributed indirectly to the progress of European civilization, I will conclude with a reflection, which I shall offer with the more confidence, that it is not entirely new, while, at the same time, the facts we have just investigated seem calculated to give it a sanction it had not before.
"Before the establishment of the intercourse which, first the Crusades, and then, later, the irruption of the Mongols, caused to spring up between the nations of the East and those of the West, the greater part of those inventions, which distinguished the close of the middle ages, had been known to the Asiatics for centuries. The polarity of the loadstone had been discovered and put into operation in China from the remotest antiquity. Gunpowder had been as long known to the Hindoos and the Chinese, the latter of whom had, in the tenth century, "thunder carriages," which seem to have been cannon.
It is difficult to account in any other way for the fire-stone throwers, which are so often mentioned in the history of the Mongols.
Houlagou, when he set out for Persia, had in his army a body of Chinese artillerymen. Again, the first edition of the cla.s.sic books engraved on wooden boards is dated in the year 952. The inst.i.tution of bank notes, and of banking and exchange offices, took place among the Jou-Tchen in 1154. Bank notes were adopted by the Mongols established in China; they were known to the Persians by the same name as the Chinese give them, and Josaphat Barbaro was informed in 1450 by an intelligent Tartar whom he met at Asof, and who had been on an emba.s.sy to China, that this sort of money was printed in China every year _con nuova stampa_; and this expression is remarkable enough, considering the time when Barbaro made this observation.
Lastly, playing cards-into the origin of which so many learned antiquarians would not have busied themselves to inquire, were it not that it marked one of the first applications of the art of engraving on wood-were invented in China in the year 1120.
"There are, besides, in the commencement of each of these inventions, particular features which seem calculated to show their origin. I will not speak of the compa.s.s, the ancient use of which, in China, Hager seems to me successfully to have demonstrated, and which pa.s.sed into Europe by means of the Crusades, previous to the irruption of the Mongols, as the famous pa.s.sage in Jacques de Vitry, and some others, prove. But the oldest playing cards, those used in the _jeu de tarots_, have a marked a.n.a.logy in their form, their designs, their size, their number, with the cards which the Chinese make use of.
Cannons were the first firearms made use of in Europe; they are also, it would appear, the only fire-arms with which the Chinese were acquainted at this period. The question as to paper money appears to have been viewed in its true light by M. Langles, and after him by Hager. The first boards made use of to print upon were made of wood and stereotyped, like those of the Chinese; and nothing is more natural than to suppose that some book from China gave the idea.
This would not be more surprising than the fragment of the Bible, in Gothic characters, which Father Martini discovered in the house of a Chinese at Tchang-Tcheou-Fou. We have the instance of another usage, which evidently followed the same route-it is that of the Souan-Pan, or arithmetical machine of the Chinese, which was, doubtless, introduced into Europe by the Tartars of the army of Batou, and which has so extensively pervaded Russia and Poland, that women who cannot read use nothing else in the settlement of their household accounts, and their little commercial dealings. The conjecture which gives a Chinese origin to the primitive idea of European typography is so natural, that it was propounded before there was any opportunity for collecting together all the circ.u.mstances which make it so probable.
It is the idea of Paulo Jovio, and of Mendoca, who imagine that a Chinese book may have been brought into Europe before the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indies, by the medium of the Scythians and Muscovites. It was developed by an anonymous Englishman; and carefully putting aside from the consideration the impression in moveable types, which is, no doubt, an invention peculiar to the Europeans, one cannot conceive any sound objection to an hypothesis which bears so strongly the stamp of probability. But this supposition acquires a still greater degree of probability when we apply it to the totality of the discoveries in question. All were made in Eastern Asia; all were unheard-of in the West. Communication took place: it was continued for a century and a-half, and ere another century had elapsed, all these inventions were known in Europe. Their origin is veiled in obscurity. The region where they manifested themselves, the men who produced them, are equally a subject of doubt. Enlightened countries were not their theatre. It was not learned men who were their authors; it was common men, obscure artisans, who lighted up, one after another, these unexpected flames. Nothing can better demonstrate the effects of a communication; nothing can be more in accordance with what we have said above as to those invisible channels, those imperceptible ramifications, whereby the science of the Eastern nations penetrated into Europe. The greater part of these inventions appear at first in the state of infancy in which the Asiatics have left them; and this circ.u.mstance alone, almost prevents our having any doubt as to their origin. Some are immediately put in practice; others remain for some time enveloped in obscurity, which conceals from us their progress, and they are taken, on their appearance, for new discoveries; all are soon brought to perfection, and, as it were, fecundated by the genius of Europeans, operating in concert, communicate to human intelligence the greatest impulse known to history. Thus, by this shock of nations, the darkness of the middle age was dispersed. Calamities, which at first aspect seemed merely destined to afflict mankind, served to arouse it from the lethargy in which it had remained for ages; and the subversion of twenty empires was the price at which Providence accorded to Europe the light of modern civilization."
The Mongol dynasty of the Youen occupied the empire for a century. After having shone with a brilliancy, the reflection of which spread over the most remote regions, it ended with Chun-Ti, a feeble prince, more mindful of frivolous amus.e.m.e.nts than of the great inheritance which had been left him by his ancestors. The Chinese regained their independence; and Tchou-Youen-Tchang, the son of a labourer, and for some time a servant in a convent of bonzes, was the founder of the celebrated dynasty of the Ming. They ascended the imperial throne in 1368, and reigned in the name of Houng-Wou.
The Tartars were ma.s.sacred in great numbers in the interior of China, and the rest were driven back to their old country. The Emperor Young-Lo pursued them three several times beyond the desert, more than 200 leagues north of the Great Wall, in order to exterminate them. He could not, however, effect this object, and, dying on his return from his third expedition, his successors left the Tartars in peace beyond the desert, whence they diffused themselves right and left. The princ.i.p.al chiefs of the blood of Tchinggiskhan occupied, each with his people, a particular district, and gave birth to various tribes, which all formed so many petty kingdoms.
These fallen princes, ever tormented by the recollection of their ancient power, appeared several times on the frontiers of the empire, and did not cease to disquiet the Chinese princes, without, however, succeeding in their attempts at invasion.
Towards the commencement of the seventeenth century, the Mantchou Tartars having made themselves masters of China, the Mongols gradually submitted to them, and placed themselves under their sovereignty. The Oelets, a Mongol tribe, deriving their name from Oloutai, a celebrated warrior in the fourteenth century, made frequent irruptions into the country of the Khalkhas, and a sanguinary war arose between these two people. The Emperor Khang-Hi, under the pretence of conciliating them, intervened in their quarrel, put an end to the war by subjecting both parties, and extended his domination in Tartary to the frontiers of Russia; the three Khans of the Khalkhas came to make their submission to the Mantchou Emperor, who convoked a grand meeting near Tolon-Noor. Each Khan presented to him eight white horses, and one white camel; from which circ.u.mstance this tribute was called, in the Mongol language, _Yousoun-Dchayan_, (the nine white); it was agreed that they should bring every year a similar present.
At the present time the Tartar nations, more or less subject to the sway of the Mantchou emperors, are no longer what they were in the time of Tchinggiskhan and Timour. Since that epoch Tartary has been disorganized by so many revolutions; it has undergone such notable political and geographical changes, that what travellers and writers said about it in former periods no longer applies to it.
During a length of time geographers divided Tartary into three grand parts-1. Russian Tartary, extending from east to west, from the sea of Kamchatka to the Black Sea, and from north to south, from the regions inhabited by the Tongous and Samoiede tribes, to the lakes Baikal and Aral. 2. Chinese Tartary, bounded east by the sea of j.a.pan, south by the Great Wall of China, west by the Gobi or great sandy desert; and north, by the Baikal Lake. 3. Independent Tartary, extending to the Caspian Sea, and including in its limits the whole of Thibet. Such a division is altogether chimerical, and without any sound basis. All these immense tracts, indeed, once formed part of the great empires of Tchinggiskhan and Timour. The Tartar hordes made encampments there at their will in the course of their warlike wanderings; but now all this is completely changed, and, to form an exact idea of modern Tartary, it is necessary to modify in a great degree the notions that have been transmitted to us by the mediaeval authors, and which, in default of better information, have been adopted by all the geographers, down to Malte-Brun, inclusive. To realize a definite idea about Tartary, we think that the clearest, most certain, and consequently the most reasonable rule, is to adopt the opinions of the Tartars themselves, and of the Chinese, far more competent judges of this matter than Europeans, who, having no connection with this part of Asia, are obliged to trust to conjectures which have often little to do with truth. In accordance with a universal usage, the soundness of which we were enabled to confirm in the course of our travels, we will divide the Tartar people into Eastern Tartars (Toung-Ta-Dze), or Mantchous, and Western Tartars (Si-Ta-Dze), or Mongols. The boundaries of Mantchouria are very distinct, as we have already stated. It is bounded on the north by the Kinggan mountains, which separate it from Siberia; on the south by the gulf of Phou-Hai and Corea; on the east by the sea of j.a.pan; and on the west by the Barrier of Stakes and a branch of the Sakhalien-Oula. It would be a difficult matter to define the limits of Mongolia in an equally exact manner; however, without any serious departure from the truth, we may include them between the 75th and the 118th degrees longitude of Paris, and 85th and 50th degrees of north lat.i.tude. Great and Little Boukaria, Kalmoukia, Great and Little Thibet-all these denominations seem to us purely imaginary. We shall enter, by-and-by, into some details on this subject, in the second part of our travels, when we come to speak of Thibet and of the neighbouring people.
The people who are comprised in the grand division of Mongolia, that we have just given, are not all to be indiscriminately considered as Mongols. There are some of them to whom this denomination can only be applied in a restricted sense. Towards the north-west, for instance, the Mongols are frequently confounded with the Moslems; and towards the south, with the Si-Fans, or Eastern Thibetians. The best way clearly to distinguish these people, is to pay attention to their language, their manners, their religion, their costume, and particularly to the name by which they designate themselves. The Mongol Khalkhas are the most numerous, the most wealthy, and the most celebrated in history. They occupy the entire north of Mongolia. Their country is of vast extent, including nearly 200 leagues from north to south, and about 500 from east to west. We will not repeat here what we have already said about the Khalkha district; we will merely add that it is divided into four great provinces, subject to four separate sovereigns. These provinces are sub-divided into eighty-four banners, in Chinese called Ky, in Mongol Bochkhon. Princes of different ranks are at the head of each banner.