The buttresses were
surmounted with an iron bulwark, and with lofty towers also of iron,
which were carried up as high as to the top of the mountain itself.
The gates were of the width of the opening cut in the mountain, and
were seventy-five feet high; and the valves, lintels, and threshold,
and also the bolts, the lock, and the key, were all of proportional
size.

Salam, on arriving at the place, saw all these wonderful structures
with his own eyes, and he was told by the people there that it was the
custom of the governor of the castles already mentioned to take horse
every Friday with ten others, and, coming to the gate, to strike the
great bolt three times with a ponderous hammer weighing five pounds,
when there would be heard a murmuring noise within, which were the
groans of the Yagog and Magog people confined in the mountain. Indeed,
Salam was told that the poor captives often appeared on the
battlements above. Thus the real existence of this people was, in his
opinion, fully proved; and even the story in respect to the diminutive
size of the Magogs was substantiated, for Salam was told that once, in
a high wind, three of them were blown off from the battlements to the
ground, and that, on being measured, they were found but three spans
high.

This is a specimen of the tales brought home from remote countries by
the most learned and accomplished travelers of those times. In
comparing these absurd and ridiculous tales with the reports which are
brought back from distant regions in our days by such travelers as
Humboldt, Livingstone, and Kane, we shall perceive what an immense
progress in intelligence and information the human mind has made since
those days.

CHAPTER III.

YEZONKAI KHAN.

1163-1175

Yezonkai Behadr.--Orthography of Mongul names.--Great
diversities.--Yezonkai's power.--A successful warrior.--Katay.--The
Khan of Temujin.--Mongol custom.--Birth of Genghis Khan.--Predictions of
the astrologer.--Explanation of the predictions.--Karasher.--Education
of Temujin.--His precocity.--His early marriage.--Plans of Temujin's
father.--Karizu.--Tayian.--Death of Yezonkai.

The name of the father of Genghis Khan is a word which can not be
pronounced exactly in English. It sounded something like this,
_Yezonkai Behadr_, with the accent on the last syllable, Behadr, and
the _a_ sounded like _a_ in _hark_. This is as near as we can come to
it; but the name, as it was really pronounced by the Mongu