teenth. As soon as
his campaign with China had closed with success, Genghis Khan made
every preparation for the punishment of this act of treachery. It was
then that Genghis Khan, with an armed horde of many hundred thousands,
burst upon the astonished peoples of Western Asia like a meteor from the
east. It was then that some of the fairest regions of the earth were
given over to a soldiery to devastate, a soldiery who had raised the
work of destruction to the level of one of the fine arts; and whose
handiwork in Bokhara, Balkh, Samarcand, Khiva and the lost cities of the
desert, is to be seen clearly imprinted in the ruins which mark the site
of ancient capitals, even at the present moment, 700 years after the
Tartar conqueror swept all resistance from his path. Afghanistan, and
the mountain ranges which are now considered to be impassable by
Russians, did not retard the progress of this "Scourge of God." Cabul,
Candahar, Ghizni fell to the warriors of far distant Mongolia, as they
fell not forty years ago to British valour, and as they must again fall
when the onset shall be made with equal intrepidity and with equal
discipline. And not content with having defaced the map of Asia, with
having converted rich and populous cities into masses of ruins, and with
having depopulated regions once prolific in all that makes life
enjoyable, Genghis Khan carried the terror of his name into the most
remote recesses of the Hindoo Koosh. He wintered in the district of Swat
on our north-west frontier, a territory which is quite unknown to us
except by hearsay, and which has only been occupied by the Mongol and
Macedonian conquerors. From his headquarters on the banks of the
Panjkora he sent messengers to Delhi; and it is uncertain whether he did
not meditate the addition of an Indian triumph to those already
obtained.

A rebellion in the far eastern portion of his dominions distracted his
attention from the Indus, and he was compelled to hasten with all speed
to quell in person the rising that was jeopardising his position in the
seat of his power. He hastily broke up from his quarters in Swat, and,
by the valley of the Kunar and Chitral, he entered Kashgar, through the
Baroghil Pass. Although he suffered much loss from a journey across
mountain roads, which were scarcely practicable in the early spring, he
succeeded in reaching Yarkand, with his main body, and hastening across
Turkestan arrived at Karakoram, his capital, in time to