Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/102

 82 THE DECLINE AND FALL Oiieliial seat of the Hona [ITnder Megh- der, c. B.C. 200] [Tengri Endu Zen^ni] Their con- quests In Scythla [Zenghi] [Kirghiz] of the earth insensibly degenerate into a race of deformed and diminutive savages^ who tremble at the sound of arms.-'' The Huns, who under the reign of Valens threatened the empire of Rome, had been formidable, in a much earlier period, to the empire of China. -^ Their ancient, perhaps their original, seat was an extensive, though dry and barren, tract of country, immediately on the north side of the great wall. Their place is at present occupied by the forty-nine Hords or Banners of the Mongous, a pastoral nation, which consists of about two hundred thousand families.-* But the valour of the Huns had extended the narrow limits of their dominions ; and their rustic chiefs, who assumed the appellation of Taiijou, gradually became the conquerors, and the sovereigns, of a formidable empire. To- wards the East, their victorious arms were stopped only by the ocean ; and the tribes, which are thinly scattered between the Amoor and the extreme peninsula of Corea, adhered with reluctance to the standard of the Huns. On the West, near the head of the Irtish and in the valleys of Imaus, they found a more ample space, and more numerous enemies. One of the lieutenants of the Tanjou subdued in a single expedition twenty- six nations ; the Igours, -^ distinguished above the Tartar race by the use of letters, were in the number of his vassals ; and by the strange connexion of human events, the flight of one of those vagrant tribes recalled the victorious Parthians from the invasion of Syria. ''^ On the side of the North, the ocean was assigned as the limit of the power of the Huns. Without enemies to re- sist their progress or witnesses to contradict their vanity, they might securely achieve a real, or imaginary, conquest of the frozen regions of Siberia. The Xvrl/iern Sea was fixed as the remote boundary of their empire. But the name of that sea, on whose shores the patriot Sovou embraced the life of a shepherd -^See the Histoire Gdn^rale des Voyages, torn. x'iii. and the Genealogical History, vol. ii. p. 620-664. 27 M. de Guignes (torn. ii. p. 1-124) has given the original history of the ancient Hiong-nou, or Huns. The Chinese geography of their country (torn. i. part ii. p. Iv.-lxiii. ) seems to comprise a part of their conquests. 28 See in Duhalde (torn. iv. p. 18-65) ^ circumstantial description with a correct map of the country of the Mongous. 29 The Igours, or Vigours [Ouigours], were divided into three branches : hunters, shepherds, and husbandmen ; and the last class was despised by the two former. See Abulghazi, part ii. c. 7. soM^moires de I'Acad^mie des Inscriptions, torn. xxv. p. 17-33. The com- prehensive view of M. de Guignes has compared these distant events.