Sketch of History of Turkestan 261
developed social organisation. That their ultimate effect would be to weaken the organisation as a military force has already been pointed out. It is not probable, therefore, that the hardy shepherds from Mongolia paid much of their blood for the conquest of the rich oases.
In speaking of the expulsion of these earliest dwellers I have used a term frequently found in that connection, but in strictness it should be called merely a conquest. The attack of the Yue-che was not that of a ravaging army led by a Jenghiz Khan or a Tamerlane, having his seat of power already fixed, and now merely hungry for dominion. It seems to have been the effort of a displaced people to find new homes. They were unaccustomed to fixed agriculture with all the niceties of a tangled irrigation works: wholesale slaughter or expulsion would then have left them without toilers for the ditches and the fields, whose fruits they might take as landlords. That a considerable number of the conquered should leave is not unlikely—in particular the pride-hurt chiefs and their closer following. The traditions of West Turkestan, indeed, bear witness to such a movement ; the earlier settlers there were disturbed by this secondary wave—the dispossessed becoming thus the dispossessors. But the body of the people probably remained. To what race they belonged is not known, and because of the darkness, many students have boldly stumbled forward with theories equally lacking in proof or disproof. Such speculation was rife even before the recent extended discoveries and studies of Sven Hedin and Dr. Stein. While the latter has not, so
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