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Zingis was the first king of the Tartars; the second was Khen-khan, the third Bathyn-khan, the fourth Esu-khan, the fifth Mangu-khan, the sixth Kublai-khan, whose power is greater than that of all his predecessors, as, besides having inherited all their acquisitions, he has added almost the whole world to his empire, during a long and prosperous reign of sixty years . All the great khans and princes of the blood of Zingis, are carried for burial to the mountains of Altai, even from the distance of an hundred days journey; and those who attend the body, kill all whom they meet by the way, ordering them to go and serve their lord in the other world, and a great number of fine horses are slain on the same occasion and pretence.
It was the knowledge of the art of iron-forging which laid the foundation of the once great empire of the Turks. Gibbon relates that these people were originally the despised slaves of the powerful Khan of the Geougen. They occupied certain districts of the mountain-ridge in the centre of Asia, called Imaus, Caf, and Altai, which yielded iron in large quantities.
They passed that lake on the ice. The khan who dwelt at the foot of Mount Altai issued his commands for the siege of Bosphorus, a city the voluntary subject of Rome, and whose princes had formerly been the friends of Athens.
In the same year Abul-Khair, the Khan of the Little Kirghiz Horde, voluntarily submitted to Russia. Twenty years later a small strip of the kingdom of Djungaria, on the Irtish, was absorbed, and toward the commencement of the reign of Catharine II, Russian authority was asserted and maintained over the broad tract from the Altai to the Caspian.
In Asia there is a species inhabiting the regions of the Altai Mountains, and another peculiar to the Siberian territory, called the Tolai. There is an Indian species found in the Nepaul Mountains, and a curious variety, also a native of Nepaul and the Himalayas, known as the Woolly Hare of Thibet.
But Boris met them with such energy that they were driven back in utter discomfiture. The northern portion of Asia consisted of a vast, desolate, thinly-peopled country called Siberia. It was bounded by the Caucasian and Altai mountains on the south, the Ural mountains on the west, the Pacific Ocean on the east, and the Frozen Ocean on the north.
It is clear that only two routes are possible between Eastern and Western Asia: that between the Kuen-lun and the Thian Shan via Kashgar and Bokhara, and that south of the Altai, skirting the north of the great lakes Balkash, Aral, and Caspian, to the south of Russia.
The mountaineers of the Tyrol and Salzburgh are taller than the other Germanic races; the Samoiedes of the Altai are not so little and squat as those of the sea-coast. In like manner it would be difficult to deny that the Galibis are really Caribbees; and yet, notwithstanding the identity of languages, how striking is the difference in their stature and physical constitution!
The duration and length of the journey from the Byzantine court to Mount Altai are not specified: it might have been difficult to mark a road through the nameless deserts, the mountains, rivers, and morasses of Tartary; but a curious account has been preserved of the reception of the Roman ambassadors at the royal camp.
Tai-tsung's frontiers reached from the confines of Persia, the Caspian Sea, and the Altai of the Kirghis steppe, along these mountains to the north side of the Gobi desert eastward to the inner Hing-an, while Sogdiana, Khorassan, and the regions around the Hindu Rush also acknowledged his suzerainty.
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