vealed themselves among these kingdoms, and the Golden Horde reached its highest point of prosperity and vigour during the rule of Usbeg Khan and his son Yanibeg. From the death of the latter it rapidly declined, until at length the Russian princes, who, by a politic deference to the behests of the Tartar Khans, had managed to preserve their positions, found themselves strong enough to rid their country of the incubus of Asiatic domination. The task of emancipating the country began with the great victory of Prince Dimitri at Kulikof, and it reached its consummation two centuries later, when Ivan the Terrible conquered the Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. The Mongols had destroyed the ancient feudalism of Russia, but the new monarchy of Russia was formed out of the ruins of their despotism. A few years after the victory at Kulikof, Russia was menaced by the armies of Timour, who marched to within a short distance of Moscow, but then withdrew without coming into collision with the Russian princes. Timour had, however, shattered the military power of the Golden Horde, thus paving the way for the ultimate success of the Russian rulers.

Among the Mongol kingdoms of Central Asia, none reached a higher point of prosperity and grandeur than the Khanates of Bokhara and of Khwaresm or Khiva. After being merged in the conquests of Timour, the latter became the spoil of the ambitious spirits of the whole of the neighbouring countries. To establish an independent state in the fertile delta of the Oxus was the first object with them all. Sheibani, the Usbeg leader, conquered this region and established in it an administration of his own, and to this day the dominant caste is composed of Usbegs, the descendants of his followers. At a later period, Ilbars, one of the Usbeg leaders, was raised to the dignity of Khan of Khwaresm, and became the founder of the present ruling house. Among the most notable of the princes of this line was Hadji Mahomed Khan, who flourished in the closing years of the sixteenth century. He was notable, however, as much for his misfortunes as his virtues. The ruler of Bokhara, although an Usbeg of the same stock as himself, was his bitterest foe, and affected to regard Khwaresm as a tributary province; and, not finding as ready an acceptance of his claims as he conceived to be his due, he invaded and for a time occupied that state. This event occurred in the year 1594 A.D., when Hadji Mahomed fled with his tale of woe to the court of the Persian king, Shah Abbas I. Out of these events arose a war between Persia and Bokhara, and an attempt on the part of Hadji Mahomed to re-establish

his authority in Khwaresm. The latter partially succeeded through the opportune assistance of the Turcomans; but when these uncertain auxiliaries had retreated with their plunder, the Bokharan army returned in increased force, and promptly restored the authority of their master. The death of the Bokharan prince simplified his task, and upon Hadji Mahomed renewing the attempt he experienced little difficulty in recovering his former position. It was during the lifetime of this prince that one of the first English travellers in Central Asia, Jenkinson, reached Khiva, of which he has given us a very graphic and interesting description.

The best known of all the rulers of Khwaresm is, however, the celebrated historian, Abul Ghazi Khan, whose history has greatly simplified the task of mastering the progress of the events which have here been touched upon. He ascended the throne at a moment of trouble, when the Turcomans were in actual possession of more than half the state, and when it seemed doubtful whether the Khivan Usbegs would be able to regain their shaken position. The Bokharans also returned, hoping to profit by the season of trouble which they saw at hand. Abul Ghazi, mainly by his own skilful dispositions, for the force engaged was extremely small, succeeded in defeating the Bokharans, driving out the Turcomans, and establishing his own authority on a sound basis. He then extended his operations into the desert, bringing many of the Turcomans into subjection, and restoring tranquillity generally throughout the whole of this region. Towards the close of his life he declared war upon Bokhara, and completely turned the tables upon that hereditary enemy of his family, defeating its army in several battles and occupying its chief city.

In the present century Allah Kuli Khan was ruler of Khiva at the time when interest first began to be taken in the movements of Russia in Central Asia. Some years before the first of our wars in Afghanistan, this prince had marched across the desert on Merv, where he established a custom house. He founded another at Sarakhs, further west, a town now in the possession of Persia. His attention was called away from this direction by the preparations the Russians were making at Mangishlak on the Caspian, and also on the Orenburg steppe, for the protection of their commerce, and for the repression of the Khivan slave-trade. General Peroffsky, the governor of Orenburg, was fully resolved to put a stop to these evils if he possibly could. Negotiations failing, he set out with an expedition computed to consist of six thousand fighting men; but he was unable to accomplish his design. During

his retreat the greater portion of his force perished, and the Russian preparations for invading the khanates were thrown back at the least ten years. Allah Kuli Khan showed a very friendly disposition towards this country, and it was at the instigation of our officers, Captains Abbott and Shakespear, that the Russian prisoners, long confined in Khiva, were released. The present Khan is Allah Kuli's nephew, and is named Seyyid Mahomed Rahim Khan. His reign has proved unfortunate in that it has seen the disappearance of all his temporal authority before the power of Russia. The campaign of 1873, carried out by General Kaufmann with great success, closed with the attenuation of the Khan's dominions, and the imposition of a war indemnity, which made Khiva a vassal state of the Czar. It can now be held to be merely the shadow of one of the last relics of Mongol conquest.

In the same way Bokhara, where another line of the great Mongol conquerors still holds a nominal supremacy, and the comparatively young state of Khokand, founded by a military adventurer in the last century, have both become merged in the Russian Empire, which has thus erased almost all the landmarks of the Mongol conquests that remained north of the Oxus; while if we turn in another direction, south of the Oxus, the Mongol states of Afghan Turkestan have become subjected to the Afghan Duranis. In India, where one of the most remarkable of all the Mongol successes was attained, although more than a century after the decline of the military cohesion of the race, the great work achieved by Baber and consolidated in the hands of his grandson Akbar found its apogee in the triumph of British arms and policy in the palace at Delhi. We have already seen that in China it fared as badly as elsewhere-the splendid deeds of Kublai alone saving the Yuen dynasty from being classed among the miserable families which have so often been placed by fortune at the head of the destinies of that country. The great fabric erected by Genghis and maintained with renewed lustre by his immediate successors is now level with the dust. The name of Mongol has been long deprived of its terrible significance among the peoples both of Europe and of Asia. The nomad who, in the days of his youthful strength, carried everything before him, and laughed to scorn the military science of the settled inhabitants, has for many generations been compelled to recognise that not only have the conditions of war changed to his disadvantage, but that his old energy and motive power have vanished. Without troubling himself about the prizes

of war, the Mongol shepherd is now well content to be left in undisturbed possession of his own pasturage.

At the present time the whole of the Mongol conquests, with the exception of Persia and a narrow strip of territory proceeding from that state in a north-eastern direction to the Pamir, is divided between the three empires of England, Russia, and China; and probably before many years the remainder will have shared the same fate. Nothing will serve to show the extent of the Mongol conquest and influence more clearly than the fact that they embraced two of the largest of modern empires and our greatest dependency. So far as it is possible to judge, the Mongol tribes of to-day retain the same qualities which made their ancestors great soldiers and administrators. They have the same physical strength, and capacity for enduring great privations, and simplicity of life, that made the tribesmen of Kabul, Yissugei, and Genghis the most formidable soldiery in the world. But while their martial qualities, though dormant, remain as vigorous as ever, they have forgotten the science of war, which was one of their own creations, and are destitute of those weapons which were once the best of their kind in the world. So long as they labour under these disadvantages, the Mongol and neighbouring tribes, including the Kirghiz and Kalmuks, must perforce, were they ever so bellicosely inclined, remain in peaceful pursuits at home in their own remote and little-known valleys. The world is, therefore, never likely to see a repetition of the Mongol raids on anything approaching the large scale of six centuries ago.

It must not be forgotten, and recent events have brought the subject very much home to us, that these Mongol tribes are, and have for two centuries been, subjects of the Chinese Empire. Some of them are enlisted in the regular army of that Power, and many more are engaged in service on the frontier. They have therefore become the soldiers and faithful subjects of the Pekin Government, which in its policy during the last two thousand years has never affected to conceal that the only limits it recognised to its empire were those imposed by its strength-a conviction similar to that upon which the policy of Genghis was based, and which may have been only an imitation carried out in a more trenchant manner. Now the Chinese Government is in a position, and will shortly be still better situated, to supply the deficiencies which render the Mongols of necessity a pastoral people. To a slight extent this has already been done, and all the tribes of the northern frontier from Lake Saissan and Kobdo to Manchuria are not

only able, but willing, to serve the Chinese Government faithfully and well. The future attitude of these tribes depends entirely on the policy pursued at Pekin, for their aspirations, whatever they may be, have become merged in and subservient to the wishes and decrees of the Celestial Empire. The Mongol tribes are consequently of importance in the present and the future chiefly as being one of the instruments available for the carrying out of the policy of China. That their obedience will be more sincere in proportion as the task allotted to them is popular with them may be taken for granted.

Of the use to which the Chinese will seek to turn their authority over the excellent material for soldiers to be found among these tribes some evidence has already been furnished by their recent campaigns in Central Asia. The re-conquest of lost provinces is an alluring game, which, if attended with success, is sure to lead to the discovery of further claims only awaiting a favourable opportunity to be put forward and enforced. There is some reason for believing that such is the case on the present occasion, and that even the surrender of Kuldja would far from exhaust the dormant claims of which the present government at Pekin might consider itself to be the heir. The lapse of time can alone show how far the Chinese Empire has consolidated its hold upon the possessions beyond the Great Wall. Should that position be as firm as it appears to be, one of the first steps taken will be the levying of a much larger force than before from the Tartar tribes. When that has been done, and Tso Tsung Tang has moulded them into a state of some efficiency, a very formidable military power will have been created in the very quarter whence Genghis Khan came six centuries ago in his struggle with the other races of the world. It will lose little, if any, of its formidable character because it will be guided by the settled convictions of Chinese policy instead of by the ambition and love of military fame of a desert 'chief.'

In glancing over the wide extent of country, and the vast quantity of detail in Mr. Howorth's volumes, which include events of great historical importance side by side with the adventures of petty marauding clans, and with the quarrels of their leaders, the one fact which throws a vivifying ray across the dense pages of this chronicle is that on that same northwestern quarter of the Chinese Empire whence the Mongol tornado came to burst over a disunited Europe and an effete Asia, there now hangs a cloud which threatens, sooner or later, to develope portentous proportions. Guided by the persistent energy of the Manchus, it may yet absorb the whole of