Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/134

122 122 CHRISTIANITY IN CIIINA, ETC. half savage tribes, made his appearance, the assembly was hushed into profound silence. Temoutchin was at this time forty-four years of age ; the habit of abso- lute command, and the practice of the fiercest battles, had given to his swarthy countenance a haughty, stern, and pitiless expression. An iron will, and a body fitted to be its instrument, inured to long privations and hard- ships, and of massive squareness in its proportions, ex- cited the admiration of his companions in arms. Temoutchin was certainly endowed with superior intelligence, but it was his athletic person that chiefly won their respect. These barbarous hordes which he swayed at his pleasure, saw in him the representative of brute force, and material power. The Toolholos, or Mongol bards, who had already begun to celebrate his exploits, said little of the military genius of the great warrior, but vaunted in their songs the loudness of his voice, which sounded like thunder in the mountains, and the strength of his hands, like the paws of a bear, which could break a man in two, as easily as an arrow. They told how, when he lay down at night, near a fire made of the trunks of great trees, that he hardly felt the sparks and burning brands that fell upon his body, but took them for the stings of insects. Such was the man who presided over this meeting of Mongol chiefs. He took his place on a sort of throne, covered with the skins of tigers and foxes, as if to indicate the cunning and cruelty that were to distinguish the conquests of the Tartar army; and then an old man advanced, clothed in long yellow robes, and whose countenance was full of enthusiasm. This was a renowned sooth- sayer, known by the name of Bout-Tengri, that is, the