ndicating their skill in archery.]

[Footnote 116: Roesler, p. 234 _et seq._ It is necessary to add that
Roesler derives much of his information from Turkish sources. (Appendix,
pp. 359-361.) According to one writer, Abu-Ali-Ahmed Ben Omar Ibn-Dasta,
the _settled_ Bulgarians were an agricultural people cultivating
cereals, in whose villages were mosques, elementary schools, &c. Many,
however, were heathens, who prostrated themselves whenever they met an
acquaintance.]

V.

Of all the tribes or hordes of the East who made the devoted plains of
the Danube their highway into Europe, there were none who have earned a
character so notorious for rapine and cruelty as the _Ungri_, or
Hungarians. Their origin is doubtful in the extreme, but it is probable
that they were a Turanian race, and Roesler has found them an aboriginal
home in Ugria, a country situated eastward of the Ural mountains and the
river Obi.[117] Their savage nature, which long survived their advent
into Europe, has been graphically described by several writers.
Roesler, who has carefully studied their early history, says that they
were mare-milking nomads living in tents, that they ate the half-raw
meat of game or fish without knives. Mare's milk appears to have been
what we may call their temperance beverage; whilst stronger drinks were
the blood of wild animals or of their enemies on the field of battle;
and the hearts of the latter were considered a sovereign remedy for
diseases.[118] Our own Hallam, in describing their appearance and
ravages in Europe, calls them a 'Tartarian tribe' who moved forward in
great numbers as a vast wave. Their ferocity, he says, was untamed; they
fought with cavalry and light armour, trusting to their showers of
arrows, against which the swords and lances of the European armies could
not avail. 'The memory of Attila,' he adds, 'was renewed in the
devastations of these savages, who, if they were not his compatriots,
resembled them both in countenance and customs.'[119]

But the nation who suffered the most severely from their irruptions, and
whose history reflects their ferocity the most faithfully, were the
Germans. Fortresses were erected to check their inroads, but 'exultingly
and with scorn these wild horsemen brushed past them, and as though they
were in pursuit of game they picked off the peasant at the plough, or
the soldier mounting guard upon the walls. Men, women, and children were
captured wherever they were fo