rom the incursions of the desert Medes.[1085] In
the fifth century of our era, the "Red Wall" was constructed near the
northern frontier of Persia as a bulwark against the Huns. It stretched
for a hundred and fifty miles from the Caspian Sea at the ancient port
of Aboskun eastward to the mountains, and thus enclosed the populous
valley of the Gurgen River.[1086] In remote ages the neck of the Crimean
Peninsula was fortified by a wall against the irruptions of the
Tauro-Scythians.[1087] The Russians early in their national history used
the same means of defense against Tartar incursions. One wall was built
from Pensa on the Sura River to Simbirsk on the Volga, just south of
Kazan; another, further strengthened by a foss and palisades, extended
from the fortress of Tsaritzin at the southern elbow of the Volga across
the fifty-mile interval to the Don, and was still defended in 1794 by
the Cossacks of the Don against the neighboring Kirghis hordes.[1088] The
classic example of such fortifications against pastoral nomads, however,
is the Great Wall of China.

[Sidenote: Pastoral life as a training for soldiers.]

The nomad is economically a herdsman, politically a conqueror, and
chronically a fighter. Strife over pasturage and wells meets us in the
typical history of Abraham, Lot and Isaac;[1089] it exists within and
without the clan. The necessity of guarding the pastures, which are only
intermittently occupied, involves a persistent military organization.
The nation is a quiescent army, the army a mobilized nation.[1090] It
carries with it a self-transporting commissariat in its flocks and
herds. Constant practice in riding, scouting and the use of arms,
physical endurance tested by centuries of exertion and hardship, make
every nomad a soldier. Cavalry and camel corps add to the swiftness and
vigor of their onslaught, make their military strategy that of sudden
attack and swifter retreat, to be met only by wariness and extreme
mobility. The ancient Scythians of the lower Danubian steppes were all
horse archers, like the Parthians. "If the Scythians were united, there
is no nation which could compare with them or would be capable of
resisting them; I do not say in Europe, but even in Asia," said
Thucydides.[1091] In this opinion Herodotus concurred.[1092] The nomad's
whole existence breeds courage. The independent, hazardous life of the
desert makes the Arab the bravest of mankind, but the settled,
agricultural Arab of E