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HENRY H. HOWORTH

The origin and early history of the Mongols are very
obscure, but from Chinese annals we learn of the existence
of the race, from the sixth to the ninth century, in regions
around the north of the great desert of Gobi and Lake Baikal
in Eastern Asia. The name Mongol is derived from the word
_mong_, meaning "brave" or "bold." Chinese accounts show
that it was given to the Mongol race long before the time of
Genghis Khan. It is conjectured that the Mongols were at
first one tribe of a great confederacy whose name was
probably extended to the whole when the power of the
imperial house which governed it gained the supremacy. The
Mongol khans are traced up to the old royal race of the
Turks, who from a very early period were masters of the
Mongolian desert and its borderland. Here from time
immemorial the Mongols "had made their home, leading a
miserable nomadic life in the midst of a wild and barren
country, unrecognized by their neighbors, and their very
name unknown centuries after their kinsmen, the Turks, had
been exercising an all-powerful influence over the destinies
of Western Asia."

But at the beginning of the thirteenth century arose among
them a chief, Genghis Khan, the "very mighty ruler," whose
prowess was destined to lead the Mongolian hordes to the
conquest of a vast empire, extending over China and from
India through Persia and into Russia.

Who and what this mighty ruler was, and by what achievements
he advanced to lay the foundations of his empire, are told
by Howorth, not only with an authoritative fidelity to
history, but with a literary art that is no less faithful in
its appreciation of oriental character and custom.

Among the men who have influenced the history of the world Genghis
Khan holds a foremost place. Popularly he is mentioned with Attila and
with Timur as one of the "scourges of God," one of those terrible
conquerors whose march across the page of history is figured by the
simile of a swarm of locusts, or a fire in a Canadian forest; but this
is doing gross injustice to Genghis Khan. Not only was he a conqueror,
a general whose consummate ability made him overthrow every barrier
that must intervene between the chief of a small barbarous tribe of an
obscure race and the throne of Asia, and this with a rapidity a