of Louis XIV, or those of England under Oliver Cromwell and Charles II." That the Moghuls were capable of great artistic accomplishments is clear from such buildings as the Taj Mahal and other famous edifices of Agra and Delhi. But the last years of the seventeenth century were years of continuous and bloody civil war, and it is probable that, apart from the struggles of European adventurers, the fabric of government would have fallen into ruin. What happened during the eighteenth century we must endeavor to see in another chapter.

CHAPTER X

THE RUSSIAN ADVENTURE IN ASIA

THERE has always been one part of Asia open to influences from the Western Continent. This, of course, is that vast region stretching eastward from the borders of European Russia. The thought brings before us, first of all, the great world of Northern Asia, which in the earlier part of this volume has been described as inert. We see an illimitable stretch of uninviting territory, covered here with dense virgin forest, and here consisting of marshy or frozen tundra, extending all the way from the Ural Mountains to the Behring Sea. Low hills, forming a kind of southern boundary, serve as a watershed from which flow toward the Arctic Ocean rivers such as the Irtish, with its tributaries the Ob and the Tobol, the Yenisei, and the Lena. Most of these streams issue from the string of lakes, including the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Aral, Lake Balkash, and Lake Baikal,1 which seems to represent the last retreat of a great inland ocean.

Yet perhaps the word "inert" is used out of ignorance, since the tribes of this northern land have had movements of their own, which the conscientious historian of a more detailed history would feel in duty bound to recover. In the extreme northeast are those Palæasiatic tribes which, on the one hand, link themselves with the Ainus of Japan, and, on the other, have contributed the slow migrations of remote times through which the American continent was peopled. A little south, toward the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, are the various Tungus 1 The largest body of fresh water in the Old World.

tribes which connect with the Manchus; and to the west are Samoyeds and Yeniseians, who have affinity with the eastern Finns. What the history of all these clans has been in the past, who shall say?

In the second place, we have to the south of the abovementioned watershed another enormous stretch of country, peopled by tribes whose story seems simple only because we make no attempt to unravel its complexity. The region includes all of Central Asia from "beyond the Caspian's iron gate" eastward to the valley of the Amur and Manchuria. Here at any rate there is no inertness, even if we are obliged to think of movements fermenting in the dark. Here, twelve hundred years before Christ, the Hiung-nu of the Chinese, whom the Indian epics called Hûna and we speak of as Huns, warred against their neighbors. When walls were built against their raids they turned in other directions, dispersing the Tungus into the mountain regions of Manchuria and Korea; forcing the Yueh-chi or Turks from valley to valley; later, driving the Saka or Scythians into the territory of Sogdiana and Bactria. So these shiftings of population in Central Asia continued to be the mainspring of the histories which worked themselves out in more settled lands. To mention merely the epoch-making names of Jenghiz and Timur is to illustrate the more or less constant character of this age-long story. Under whatever name the tribes of this territory appear, to speak only of comparatively modern times, - as Buriat, Turk, Kirgiz, Kalmuck, Usbeg, Bashkir, or Turkoman, their movements have been determinative of a large part of the story of a continent.

It might therefore seem our proper task to disentangle from the welter of tribalism some continuous narrative. It might at least seem reasonable to tell something of the history of Khanates like those of Khiva, Bokhara, and Kharkhand. Doubtless all these felt themselves important. The Khan of Kharkhand was not the only Central Asian monarch to celebrate his coronation by shooting arrows north and east and south and

west, in token of widespread sovereignty. Yet we feel that the general reader would hardly thank us for the effort, however painstakingly made. Most, we are assured, will prefer to know something of that return wave of European influence which flowed back from Russia after the ebbing of the Tatar tide. This story must also touch the history of the other three nations which come directly into contact with Central Asia, namely, Turkey, Persia, and China.

Russia was, in a certain sense, Asiatic by virtue of neighborhood even before she was to so large an extent Asiatic politically and by intermixture of blood. It is true that much of the culture of the older Russia was Byzantine, but even this was acceptable mainly because of its obviously Asiatic elements. Later incursions from Asia came perilously near to obliterating the effects of the earlier.

Though the name Sibir, from which the term Siberia is derived, does not appear in Russia till the beginning of the fifteenth century, the region which is now Western Siberia was known to the merchants of Novgorod as early as the eleventh century. It was the land whence were brought the furs so eagerly purchased by the nobles of Europe. It was also the fabled land of Yugria1 where, according to the Chronicle of Nestor, Alexander the Great discovered the unclean peoples, and fenced them up amid their mountains lest they should corrupt the earth.

Nevertheless, when the Mongol invasions first occurred, they were thought of as the coming of "these terrible strangers. The calamity was looked upon as a judgment upon Russia for the quarrels of Moscow and Novgorod. The first great clash came on the banks of the Kalka in 1224, when the term Mongol came to be almost synonymous with raider. Very soon afterward it was plain that the barbarians had come to stay. They built a capital on the Volga, and ere long the western section of the invaders, known as the Kipchaks and the Golden Horde, was regarded as a more or less settled community.

1 See Curtin, Journey in Southern Siberia, p. 5.

We need not here repeat what has been said in a former chapter with respect to the Mongols generally. The doom of Russia in Europe was sealed for some centuries when Jenghiz Khan, in a hurry to undertake a second invasion of China, sent his generals to conquer the lands to the west. That this was done with terrible severity, as well as with effectiveness, is illustrated by the story of the Russian princes crushed beneath the platform on which the victorious Mongol generals were festively celebrating their success. Of Ogdai's following up of his father's campaigns we have already had the briefest of sketches. We may here add that he pushed the conquest of China in the east till the Chinese garrisons were reduced to cannibalism and even the crushed bones of the dead were used as meal. So to the west he razed Kiev, ravaged the fair lands of Hungary and Poland, and captured Cracow and Liegnitz. It was fortunate for mankind that Ogdai died of drink and licentiousness in 1241. After ten years of dissension came Mangu, the eldest son of Ogdai's brother Tule. He made his court at Karakorum, received William de Rubruk, and was favorably disposed toward Christianity - as well as toward Muhammadanism and Buddhism. Mangu's brother Hulagu had completed the destruction of the Khalifate by the sack of Bagdad in 1263. Some of the Western Powers expected to find in him an ally against the Saracens, but this assistance was not forthcoming, though Hulagu had a Christian wife and treasured a letter from the Pope.

All this while, and during the more settled time that followed under Kublai Khan and his successors, Russia, though struggling to hold by the traditions of the past, was inevitably receiving a stamp from the Mongol impact. The Tatar was getting beneath the skin of the Russian, revealing an affinity which was to determine eventually the precise character of many Russian institutions. This character was to serve the cause of imperialism for generations to come. In 1340 the Grand Dukes of Moscow were enrolled among the subjects of the Great Khans, and Russian guards were to be found among