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INHABITANTS THE MONGOLIANS. 103
barriers, the Chinese were able to develop their national unity, and concentrate
their energies, in order henceforth to enter into continuous relations with the
Western world. When the " wall of 10,000 li," forced at last by Jenghiz Khan,
thus lost all further strategic importance, it had at least already protected the
empire for a period of fourteen hundred years.
In its present condition the Great Wall belongs to various epochs. In the
severe Mongolian climate, with its sudden and violent transitions of temperature, a
very few years suffice to crumble most ordinary buildings, and it may be doubted
whether any portion of Shi Hoangti's original work still survives. Nearly all the
eastern section from Ordos to the Yellow Sea was rebuilt in the fifth century, and
the double rampart along the north-west frontier of the plains of Peking was twice
restored in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. With the changes of dynasties
and the vicissitudes of frontier wars, the lines themselves were modified, portions
being abandoned in one place, consolidated in another. Thus is explained the
great difference in the style and workmanship at various points. North of Peking
it is still in a state of perfect repair, whereas in many western districts along the
Gobi frontier it is little more than an earthen rampart, while for considerable
distances all vestiges of the wall have disappeared. Similar structures in the
Transbaikal region north of Mongolia, traditionally referred to Jenghiz Khan,
still recall the perennial struggles between the agricultural populations and their
nomad neighbours.
INHABITANTS THE MONGOLIANS.
The Mongolians, against whom the Chinese were fain at one time to protect
themselves by such vast barriers, arc a people without any national cohesion.
Conquerors may have occasionally united them in a single army ; but on their
return to the steppe they again broke up into tribal divisions. Thanks to the
intestine feuds maintained between these sections of the race, the Chinese have
been enabled to triumph over the Khalkhas, Eliuts, and Zungars, while the
Buriats and Kalmuks fell a prey to the Russians. The very name of Mongol was
applied during the two centuries of their political supremacy to all the different
races who took part in the conquests of Jenghiz Khan and his successors,
penetrating on the one hand into the Chinese Empire, on the other into the heart of
Europe. Even after the extinction of the family of Jenghiz the vast empire of
Timur was still attributed to the Mongolians, although it really represented the
reaction of the Western Asiatic world against the East. Later on the title of " Great
Mogul " was extended to Uabor and his successors on the throne of Delhi, although
they had no longer any Mongol warriors in their armies. Pride in a remote
descent from the great conqueror was the only claim to the title. The Zungarian
Empire, founded towards the end of the seventeenth century, was on the other
hand really of Mongol origin ; but it nowhere stretched beyond the Central
Asiatic plains and plateaux.
In modisi'vul times the Mongols were confused with (lie Tatars, or Talus, a
feeble tribe, in the twelfth century occupying the In-shan valleys, but which, in the