We have been treating of countries which have, in different ages of the world, sent forth successive hordes to overrun and occupy the fairest regions of Asia, and our curiosity now leads us to note the present state and condition of these various tribes of human beings. Attila and Alaric spread devastation in the empire of the Cæsars. Jengis and Timour have succeeded them in more modern but equally destructive inroads. Through these great revolutions we trace the ever-wandering spirit of the Tartar people; but ere the first of these destroyers inflicted his calamities on Rome, we could gather the evil propensities of the race from the histories of Semiramis, Cyrus, and Alexander. Subsequent to the age of Timour, we have another irruption from the Uzbek Tartars, though it wasted its strength at the base of Hindoo Koosh. From the days of Herodotus to the present time, we are presented with a state of ceaseless change and fluctuation in the countries of Central Asia. For this great storehouse of emigration we have been referred to Khitai, the regions of Northern China; but authentic history fixes it in a site far less remote. Jengis and his bands issued from the pastoral lands beyond the Jaxartes, which is also the migration seat of his successors; and may be, therefore, safely fixed as the cradle of Scythian, Hun, and Tartar inroad.

We shall not stop to speculate on the probabilities of a country so thinly peopled sending forth hordes which have been exaggerated by terror to thousands and hundreds of thousands. With greater reason shall we attribute the size of these armies to their increasing number, as they advanced to plunder and victory. A pastoral is but another name for a migratory nation, and its transfer to a near or distant country, generally depends upon the ambition or spirit of a few of its leaders. This state of society is not altered in the paternal seats of Jengis and Timour, and an invader might pursue, though with limited success, the same paths of conquest. The volcano may rest for a time in a quiescent state, but the Tartar, in his erratic life, will ever sigh for new scenes; but it depends on the Khan if that passion be gratified. Probabilities of success in modern times. The disciplined valour of Russia would now arrest him on the west; and European prowess, engrafted on the legions of India, might there oppose the torrent; but in Turkey, Persia, Cabool, and China, a horde of Tartars would make the same impression as in former times. The Tartar inroads have ever been of the most transitory nature. Neither the empires of Jengis or Timour were consolidated, and the subjugation of India, afterwards effected by their successors, arose from fortuitous circumstances, over which their previous inroads had had little influence.

The literary world has long dwelt with an attentive and scrutinizing eye on the history of the Tartars, exercising, as they ever have, so great an influence over the destinies of the world. Received opinions now present to us a vast nation in Northern Asia, classed into three grand divisions, under the generic name of Tartar. I shall, elsewhere, record the few facts, which I gathered in the country regarding this race, but the subject partakes too much of a dissertation to be here introduced. The intermixture of the Tartars with the more western nations has brought about many changes, and the Tartar is no longer disfigured by those unseemly features which inspired disgust. But a physiognomist will not deduce from the change, that the Toork of the Oxus differs from his countrymen of Yarkund, the Moghul of modern writers, and far to the eastward. The Toorks intermarried with the Tajiks of Mawurool nuhr, much in the same manner as the Seljooks, who entered Persia, formed alliances in that country; but we cannot on that account reckon them a separate race, because of their beauty. The features of the Tartar have not altogether disappeared from the natives of Toorkistan; and may yet be traced in small eyes, flattened foreheads, and a scanty beard, though we see nought of the hideous visages which are described in the records of their inroads. The well-known couplet[31] of Hafiz, that paints the beautiful Toorkee girl of Shiraz, near Samarcand, has been celebrated; nor have the fair sex ever been destitute of charms in these regions, since we learn that Roxana, whom Alexander married in Transoxiana, was the most beautiful woman whom the Greeks had seen in Asia, after the wife of Darius. The inhabitant of the city, however, is more changed than the peasant; and on the mountains of Hindoo Koosh we had among the Huzaras a much closer resemblance to the Tartars. Among them there is a singular tribe, known by the name of Tatar Huzaras, which amount to about a thousand families, and occupies the space between Hindoo Koosh and Bameean. Tradition states these people to be descendants of Jengis Khan’s army, but their name of Tatar deserves remark, since the only other tribe so denominated by the people themselves is the Nogai on the frontiers of Russia.

Such is the mutability of men and things in this circle of Tartar abode, that if you now ask for the race of Zagatye or Chaghtye, the illustrious descendants of Jengis and the conquerors of Hind, and find them at all, they exist in the most abject poverty. The kings of Bokhara did, however, claim a lineage and uninterrupted descent from it, till a profligate minister snapped the thread by assassination. The Uzbek ruler of Kokan, the second state in Transoxiana, still asserts his descent from Baber, whose paternal kingdom of Ferghana he now inherits. The Uzbeks distinguish themselves by thirty-two tribes, into which they are said to have been divided in their pastoral seats. The following list exhibits a few of the principal divisions of the Uzbek race.

The roaming propensities of the Tartar occur in every page of his history, and the example of the Kalmuks, who returned, in our own age, from the Black Sea to their original seats on the frontiers of China, exhibits the wonderful facility with which erratic nations alter their places of abode. The event took place in the latter end of the last century, and is still remembered by many of the inhabitants of Toorkistan, who described it to me. The colony advanced with their herds and flocks; and occupied, it is said, in the breadth of its advancing column, a journey of no less than three days. It forced its way through all opposition to the “dusht i Kipchak,” north of the Jaxartes, and reached the primeval seat of their ancestors at Yarkund and Eela. The Kalmuks are not Mahommedans, and the “faithful” made war on them as they passed, and about 1500 Kalmuk slaves were added to the population of Bokhara; but small was the impression that could be made on the hundred thousand families, the reputed number of the migrators. The Kalmuk and Uzbek are said to have sprung from one tribe[32], and this change of habitation has now mingled it with the Kuzzak[33], a great tribe that once lay to the eastward of it; and Kalmuks, Kuzzaks, and Kirgizzes are mingled together. The Kirgiz and Kuzzak appear to be much the same people, differing only in location. The Kirgizzes whom I met, had a flat countenance, and closely resembled the Toorkmun. They inhabit Pameer. The Kuzzaks pass the summer in the southern parts of Russia, and repair in winter to the neighbourhood of Bokhara, where they sell their sheep.

We find as great a variety among the citizens of Toorkistan as in the subdivisions of the Tartars. The aborigines of the country are the Tajiks or Tats; sometimes, but erroneously, denominated Sart, which is a nickname given to them by the nomade tribes. The hostile Toorks from the north subverted the power of this people, in a remote age; as different dynasties of the same hordes have overwhelmed each other. The Tajiks are addicted to commerce. Their language is Persian, which has long been that of the country; for Toorkistan fell under the dominion of Persia before the age of the Caliphs. In a Persian manuscript which I procured at Bokhara, I even find that this language was used by order of the Arabs themselves, in converting the people to Islam. The number of Persians in Toorkistan is great; since we hold the inhabitants of Merve in that light, as well as the slaves and their descendants. There are also Jews, Hindoos, and Armenians. Of the Toorkmuns I have already spoken; but there is yet another description of Tartars, the Nogais, who have migrated from Russia, and settled to the number of about a thousand families in the city of Bokhara.

The people of Northern Asia worshipped the sun, fire, and the elements previous to the age of Mahommed; and we are informed, that in the earlier times of Islam, some of the priests or Magi of Persia fled from that country beyond the Oxus. I searched much for a trace of the original or imported worship; the Uzbeks assured me that there were fire worshippers in the ancient Tartar city of Cazan in Russia; but the censer of the Greek Padre was probably mistaken for the altar of the Magi. But the similarity between the creed of the Tartar and the Persian was curious; and since we find such innumerable hordes issuing from beyond the Oxus in the ages of authentic history, may we not derive the creed of Zoroaster or Zeratusht from Scythia or Tartary?

How full of interest is every thing connected with races of man that have so often changed the destinies of the world. Could we but follow up that at which we have now glanced, we might gather from the traditions of the people much that would illustrate early history, and the secret of these irruptions upon nations both barbarous and civilised. How much, too, might be traced from the shades of resemblance between the original tree and the branches which it has shot forth to stimulate an enquiry that is eminently attractive. I dismiss it, deploring my own incompetency.