disposing of
prisoners.--Prodigious slaughter.--Atrocities.--The pearl.--Genghis
Khan's grandson killed.--His mother's revenge.--Principles of the
Mohammedan faith.--Genghis Khan's opinion.--The spirit of religious
bigotry.

After this Genghis Khan went on successfully for several years,
extending his conquests over all the western part of Central Asia,
while the generals whom he had left at home were extending his
dominions in the same manner in the eastern portion. He overran nearly
all of Persia, went entirely around the Caspian Sea, and even
approached the confines of India.

In this expedition toward India he was in pursuit of Jalaloddin.
Immediately after the death of his father, Jalaloddin had done all in
his power to raise an army and carry on the war against Genghis Khan.
He met with a great deal of embarrassment and difficulty at first, on
account of the plots and conspiracies which his grandmother had
organized in favor of his brother Kothboddin, and the dissensions
among his people to which they gave rise. At last, in the course of a
year, he succeeded, in some measure, in healing this breach and in
raising an army; and, though he was not strong enough to fight the
Monguls in a general battle, he hung about them in their march and
harassed them in various ways, so as to impede their operations very
essentially. Genghis Khan from time to time sent off detachments from
his army to take him. He was often defeated in the engagements which
ensued, but he always succeeded in saving himself and in keeping
together a portion of his men, and thus he maintained himself in the
field, though he was growing weaker and weaker all the time.

At last he became completely discouraged, and, after signal defeat
which he met with from a detachment which had been sent against him by
Genghis Khan, he went, with the few troops that remained together, to
a strong fortress among the mountains, and told the governor that it
seemed to him useless to continue the struggle any longer, and that he
had come to shut himself up in the fortress, and abandon the contest
in despair.

The governor, however, told him that it was not right for a prince,
the descendant of ancestors so illustrious as his, and the inheritor
of so resplendent a crown, to yield to discouragement and despondency
on account of the reverses of fortune. He advised him again to take
the field, and to raise a new army, and continue the contest to the
end.

Jalalo