OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 75 connexion between the people and their territory is of so frail a texture that it may be broken by the slightest accident. The camp, and not the soil, is the native country of the genuine Tartar. Within the precincts of that camp, his family, his com- panions, his property are always included ; and in the most dis- tant marches he is still surrounded by the objects which are dear, or valuable, or familiar in his eyes. The thirst of rapine, the fear or the resentment of injury, the impatience of servi- tude, have, in every age, been sufficient causes to urge the tribes of Scythia boldly to advance into some unknown countries, where they might hope to find a more plentiful subsistence or a less formidable enemy. The revolutions of the North have fre- quently determined the fate of the South ; and, in the conflict of hostile nations, the victor and the vanquished have alternately drove and been driven, from the confines of China to those of Germany.^*^ These great emigrations, which have been some- times executed with almost incredible diligence, were rendered more easy by the peculiar nature of the climate. It is well known that the cold of Tartary is much more severe than in the midst of the temperate zone might reasonably be expected : this imcommon rigour is attributed to the height of the plains, which rise, especially towards the East, more than half a mile above the level of the sea ; and to the quantity of saltpetre with which the soil is deeply impregnated. ^^ In the winter- season, the broad and rapid rivers, that discharge their waters into the Euxine, the Caspian, or the Icy Sea, are strongly frozen ; the fields are covered with a bed of snow ; and the fugitive or victorious tribes may securely traverse, with their families, their If These Tartar emigrations have been discovered by M. de Guignes (Histoire des Huns, torn. i. ii.)> a skilful and laborious interpreter of the Chinese language; who has thus laid open new and important scenes in the history of mankind. [The account of the Hiung-nu (= " Hiung slaves ") and their relations to China, which Gibbon has derived from De Guignes, is on the whole accurate. I have compared it with the work of a living Chinese scholar, Mr. E. H. Parker, A Thou- sand Years of the Tartars, 1895. But this episode ceases to be relevant, when we recognize that there is no good ground for identifying the Hiung-nu with the Huns ; in fact, that identification rested entirely on the resemblance of name between the two nomad peoples. Sir H. Howorth decided against the theory, on the ground that the Hiung-nu are certainly 1 urks, while he regards the Huns as Ugrians. But see Appendix 6.] 11 A plain in the Chinese Tartary, only eighty leagues from the great wall, was found by the missionaries to be three thousand geometrical paces above the level of the sea. Montesquieu, who has used, and abused, the relations of travellers, deduces the revolutions of Asia from this important circumstance that heat and cold, weakness and strength, touch each other without any temperate zone (Esprit des Loix, 1. xvii. c. 3).
