Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/86

 Rh it, cool and invigorating, though to Europeans, accustomed to live within the modifying influence of the sea, it would appear to be subject to extremes of temperature. Deserts in the proper sense of the word—sandy or stony wastes, with little or no vegetation or water—nowhere existed, except on the extreme north-western confines, and wherever the word 'desert' occurs in the text, when referring to Moghulistan, it is because the author has used the Persian or Turki equivalent, though the real meaning would be 'the open country,' or the 'country devoid of towns and cultivation'—the 'steppe'—a feature which no English word will describe.

However this may be, it was a land in every way suited to the habits and customs of a sparse population of nomadic graziers and shepherds, and it accordingly evolved, or at least attracted, a race whose requirements it fulfilled. But the peaceable pursuits of raising flocks and attending herds were not the only avocations of a people with the traditions of the Moghuls. Perhaps their chief requirement was a land whence they might raid on their settled and more wealthy neighbours, and whither, if beaten, they could retire and find a refuge—a land, in short, so inaccessible and unproductive to all but themselves, that it formed, at once, a base for their own description of warfare, a secure retreat, and an inhospitable waste for the pursuing enemy; for where they moved, the whole resources of the country—the food supplies, the transport, the shelter—moved with them, and were used to meet their wants alone. There could have been no forts or towns or immovable property, worthy of the name, for an invader to destroy, and no stationary population, left undefended, upon whom he might wreak his vengeance; for the women and children and the aged all formed part of the expedition, and were doubtless employed or disposed of, in much the same way while the tribe was on the march, as while at home in their own encampment. In times of peace—or rather of inactivity—they probably bred, besides the camels and sheep, which were their principal food-producers, large numbers of ponies, for it was on these that all depended, when wars or forays were on hand. Mobility must have been the quality they relied on more than any other, both in attack and retreat, and we find them baffling their enemies more by their movements than by their fighting power. Indeed, fighting in its proper sense must have been with them, as with most of their neighbours, a pursuit very sparingly