ety or a hundred years we should find the great-grandsons or the
great-great-grandsons of the wild marauders who first crossed the
Jaxartes, so different from their ancestors in features both of mind and
body, that they hardly would be recognized as deserving the Tartar name.
At the end of that period their power came to an end, the Saracens
became masters of them and of their country, but the process of
emigration southward from the Scythian desert, which had never
intermitted during the years of their domination, continued still,
though that domination was no more.

Here it is necessary to have a clear idea of the nature of that
association of the Turkish tribes from the Volga to the Eastern Sea, to
which I have given the name of Empire:--it was not so much of a
political as of a national character; it was the power, not of a system,
but of a race. They were not one well-organized state, but a number of
independent tribes, acting generally together, acknowledging one leader
or not, according to circumstances, combining and cooeperating from the
identity of object which acted on them, and often jealous of each other
and quarrelling with each other on account of that very identity. Each
tribe made its way down to the south as it could; one blocked up the way
of the other for a time; there were stoppages and collisions, but there
was a continual movement and progress. Down they came one after another,
like wolves after their prey; and as the tribes which came first became
partially civilized, and as a mixed generation arose, these would
naturally be desirous of keeping back their less polished uncles or
cousins, if they could; and would do so successfully for awhile: but
cupidity is stronger than conservatism; and so, in spite of delay and
difficulty, down they would keep coming, and down they did come, even
after and in spite of the overthrow of their Empire; crowding down as to
a new world, to get what they could, as adventurers, ready to turn to
the right or the left, prepared to struggle on anyhow, willing to be
forced forward into countries farther still, careless what might turn
up, so that they did but get down. And this was the process which went
on (whatever were their fortunes when they actually got down, prosperous
or adverse) for 400, nay, I will say for 700 years. The storehouse of
the north was never exhausted; it sustained the never-ending run upon
its resources.

2.

I was just now referring to a cha