peoples, and stamps them as Mongols of the purest water.  There is something almost infra-human in their ugliness.  They show in an exaggerated degree all those repulsive traits which we see toned down and refined in the face of an average Chinaman; and it is difficult, when we meet them for the first time, to believe that a human soul lurks behind their expressionless, flattened faces and small, dull, obliquely set eyes.  If the Tartar and Turkish races are really descended from ancestors of that type, then we must assume that they have received in the course of time a large admixture of Aryan or Semitic blood.

But we must not be too hard on the poor Kalmyks, or judge of their character by their unprepossessing appearance.  They are by no means so unhuman as they look.  Men who have lived among them have assured me that they are decidedly intelligent, especially in all matters relating to cattle, and that they are—­though somewhat addicted to cattle-lifting and other primitive customs not tolerated in the more advanced stages of civilisation—­by no means wanting in some of the better qualities of human nature.

Formerly there was a fourth pastoral tribe in this region—­the Nogai Tartars.  They occupied the plains to the north of the Sea of Azof, but they are no longer to be found there.  Shortly after the Crimean war they emigrated to Turkey, and their lands are now occupied by Russian, German, Bulgarian, and Montenegrin colonists.

Among the pastoral tribes of this region the Kalmyks are recent intruders.  They first appeared in the seventeenth century, and were long formidable on account of their great numbers and compact organisation; but in 1771 the majority of them suddenly struck their tents and retreated to their old home in the north of the Celestial Empire.  Those who remained were easily pacified, and have long since lost, under the influence of unbroken peace and a strong Russian administration, their old warlike spirit.  Their latest military exploits were performed during the last years of the Napoleonic wars, and were not of a very serious kind; a troop of them accompanied the Russian army, and astonished Western Europe by their uncouth features, their strange costume, and their primitive accoutrements, among which their curious bows and arrows figured conspicuously.

The other pastoral tribes which I have mentioned—­Bashkirs, Kirghiz, and Nogai Tartars—­are the last remnants of the famous marauders who from time immemorial down to a comparatively recent period held the vast plains of Southern Russia.  The long struggle between them and the agricultural colonists from the northwest, closely resembling the long struggle between the Red-skins and the white settlers on the prairies of North America, forms an important page of Russian history.