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These advantages, however, were detrimental rather than serviceable to the Persian cause; since they encouraged the Persian satraps to regard the Macedonians as an enemy no more formidable than the various tribes of Greeks with whom they had now carried on war in Asia Minor for considerably more than a century.
The chariots were made to contain, besides the driver of the horses, one or more warriors, each armed in the completest manner. These warriors stood on the floor of the vehicle, and fought with javelins and spears. The great plains which abound in the interior countries of Asia were very favorable for this species of warfare.
Though those are the polite countries in Europe, women there set themselves above shame, and despise delicacy. It is laughed out of existence, as a silly and unfashionable weakness. But in China, one of the politest countries in Asia, and perhaps not even, in this respect, behind France, or Italy, the case is quite otherwise.
So far as history teaches us, the populations of Europe, Asia, and Africa were, twenty centuries ago, just what they are now, in their broad features and general distribution. The evidence yielded by Archaeology is not very definite, but, so far as it goes, it is to much the same effect.
Speaking roughly, the dominions of Russia in Central Asia, south of Orenburg, may be taken as almost equal in geographical extent to those of our Indian Empire; but there is this striking difference between the two, that whilst the population of India is computed at 250 millions, that of Central Asia, even at the highest computation, is only reckoned at four or five millions, of whom nearly half are nomadic that is, they wander about, not from choice, but in search of food and pasturage.
My Lords, you well know that the Russian arms met with great success in Asia, and that in the Treaty of San Stefano considerable territories were yielded by Turkey to Russia.
There are few more hardy or widely distributed species of vegetables than asparagus. It is "a native of the sea-coasts of various countries of Europe and Asia." According to Loudon, it is abundant on the sandy steppes in the interior of Russia. In Southern Russia and Poland the horses and cows feed upon it. It grows freely in the fens of Lincolnshire, and is indigenous to Cornwall.
Returning from the conquest of the East, Aurelian had already crossed the Straits which divided Europe from Asia, when he was provoked by the intelligence that the Palmyrenians had massacred the governor and garrison which he had left among them, and again erected the standard of revolt. Without a moment's deliberation, he once more turned his face towards Syria.
The armies of Keen Lung traversed the Gobi Desert and arrived in Central Asia, but the incapacity of his generals prevented the campaigns having those decisive results which he expected. The autocratic Chinese ruler treated his generals who failed like the fickle French Republic. The penalty of failure was a public execution.
The idea once fixed in his mind that there was land at a not impossible distance to the west, and perhaps a sea-road to the shores of Asia itself, the next thing to be done, was to go and discover it.
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