Among the Celestials : vol.1 / Page 159 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

0159	Among the Celestials : vol.1

CHAP. vi.] MONGOLS OF TO-DAY. 129

saw them in those remoter desert tracts through

which they again and again passed in their

marches westward. Had these Mongols de-

generated from what they once had been ?

Were they the mere embers of a fiery race ?

and was that fire latent or extinct ? These

were questions which often puzzled me as I

looked on the dirty ragged individual who

came begging to me and went away satisfied

when my servants gave them brown paper for

tobacco, and old lime juice bottles as valuable

presents.

On reading over the accounts of the Mongols

in the zenith of their power, I see no reason to

think that those who followed Chengiz Khan

were so very different from those I saw to-day.

Dull, heavy, and indolent as these latter are,

they have at any rate the attribute of hardiness.

They are still capable, by living on the fermented

milk of mares, called kumiss, of carrying out

prodigious marches. And they are probably

to-day just as capable of committing the bar-

barous cruelties for which they were famous as

they were in the days of Chengiz. The great

mass of the Mongols are probably very much

the same to-day as they were at the time of the

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