be of no practical use to him in learning a language of the Mongol group.  In their religions likewise the two races differ.  The Mongols are as a rule Shamanists or Buddhists, while the Tartars are Mahometans.  Some of the Mongol invaders, it is true, adopted Mahometanism from the conquered Tartar tribes, and by this change of religion, which led naturally to intermarriage, their descendants became gradually blended with the older population; but the broad line of distinction was not permanently effaced.

It is often supposed, even by people who profess to be acquainted with Russian history, that Mongols and Tartars alike first came westward to the frontiers of Europe with Genghis Khan.  This is true of the Mongols, but so far as the Tartars are concerned it is an entire mistake.  From time immemorial the Tartar tribes roamed over these territories.  Like the Russians, they were conquered by the Mongol invaders and had long to pay tribute, and when the Mongol empire crumbled to pieces by internal dissensions and finally disappeared before the victorious advance of the Russians, the Tartars reappeared from the confusion without having lost, notwithstanding an intermixture doubtless of Mongol blood, their old racial characteristics, their old dialects, and their old tribal organisation.

The germ of the vast horde which swept over Asia and advanced into the centre of Europe was a small pastoral tribe of Mongols living in the hilly country to the north of China, near the sources of the Amur.  This tribe was neither more warlike nor more formidable than its neighbours till near the close of the twelfth century, when there appeared in it a man who is described as “a mighty hunter before the Lord.”  Of him and his people we have a brief description by a Chinese author of the time:  “A man of gigantic stature, with broad forehead and long beard, and remarkable for his bravery.  As to his people, their faces are broad, flat, and four-cornered, with prominent cheek-bones; their eyes have no upper eyelashes; they have very little hair in their beards and moustaches; their exterior is very repulsive.”  This man of gigantic stature was no other than Genghis Khan.  He began by subduing and incorporating into his army the surrounding tribes, conquered with their assistance a great part of Northern China, and then, leaving one of his generals to complete the conquest of the Celestial Empire, he led his army westward with the ambitious design of conquering the whole world.  “As there is but one God in heaven,” he was wont to say, “so there should be but one ruler on earth”; and this one universal ruler he himself aspired to be.