Swords From the East, page 57
Alai had drawn closer to his knee. He smiled at the candidate concubine. "Precious Pearl," he said, stroking her dark hair, "you please me. But in the future do not try to manage the affairs of my palace."
"Nay, lord of my heart," she assented happily.
So Marco Polo left them in the jade house. With Hoshang and the Tatars who were bearing the body of Ahmed the Persian cut into seven parts, he retraced his steps down the Green Mount toward the palace, which he knew he could not leave now-however homesick he might be for Venice. And he reflected that, no matter how many years he might dwell in Cathay, he would never understand its people.
"How," he asked Hoshang suddenly, "did you steal the ruby?"
"Po-lo, I told you how."
Messer Marco pondered and laughed. "Kao Hoshang, you have no sons. And if you have no sons, how could you have a granddaughter?"
Hoshang bent his head and sighed. "Alas, that is a great mystery."
"Tell me why you slew Ahmed when you did."
"A dead enemy," the old astrologer nodded, "is better than a live one."
Adventure magazine, in which many of the tales in this volume first appeared, maintained a letter column titled "The Camp-Fire." As a descriptor, "letter column" does not quite do this regular feature justice. Adventure was published two and sometimes three times a month, and as a result of this frequency and the interchange of ideas it fostered, "The Camp-Fire" was really more like an Internet bulletin board than a letter column found in today's quarterly or even monthly magazines. It featured letters from readers, editorial notes, and essays from writers. If a reader had a question or even a quibble with a story, he could write in and the odds were that the letter would not only be printed but that the story's author would draft a response.
Harold Lamb and other contributors frequently wrote lengthy letters that further explained some of the historical details which appeared in their stories. The relevant letters for this volume follow.
There were a total of 753 issues of Adventure, and no single library in the United States has a complete collection (few libraries have any copies of Adventure). With those facts in mind, perhaps you will excuse the inclusion of several additional Camp-Fire letters for which I do not have exact dates. Copies of them were passed on to me by pulp scholar Alfred Lybeck, and I have so far been unable to determine in which issues of Adventure they originally appeared, although there is no doubt in my mind as to their authenticity (due to typeface, Camp-Fire logo, comments from Adventure editor Arthur Sullivan Hoffman, Harold Lamb's distinctive writing style and knowledge base, etc.). Unlike the usual run of Lamb's letters, these were not pulled from issues containing his stories; rather, they were typed in response to reader queries. The subject of at least one of them would be considered politically incorrect today.
As with the other Bison Books editions of Lamb's work, the prefatory comments of Adventure editor Arthur Sullivan Hoffman also are printed here.
August 30, 1922: "The Road of the Giants"
Most of us aren't very wise in the history of ancient Asia-or the Asia of a few centuries ago, or even the Asia of today, so when Harold Lamb does the work of digging it out and handing it to us on a platter it tastes pretty good.
Berkeley, California
Our school histories, in fact all of our histories put together, do not give as much of an idea of Central Asia in the year 1771. It was that year and place, however, that saw the passing of the Giants.
Owing to this blank space in history-unwritten because no wellknown battle took place therein, or any court cabal, or secret confessions of any lady in waiting-the writer will try to sketch the scene a little. The great empire of Genghis Khan had been broken up five hundred years ago. The wave of nomads, the Mongols from the steppe country of Central Asia, had settled back.
So the name of the mighty conqueror, Genghis Khan, was only a legend in the land; the grim figure of the lame Timor (called Tamerlane in European histories) had held its sway among the mountains of Central Asia, and rested now in the tomb.
Other nomads, the Chagatai Mongols-called by us the Moguls-had arisen in the mountains north of Afghanistan, had ruled India, with splendor and wisdom; but their descendants of the peacock throne were only effigies who watched the incoming of the Portuguese, French, and English. Warren Hastings is mentioned in our histories.
But India itself is separated from Central Asia by the Himalayas, and only Tibet had a hand in the passing of the Giants. Tibet-as we call it; the inhabitants term it Po, and the castle-temple at Lhassa the Po-tala-was the religious center of Central Asia, a kind of transmountain pope ruling over a hierarchy of priests, with spies, disciples, and a fine system of news collection by mounted couriers. The authority of the Dalai Lama or King-Priest extended from the Chinese side of the Gobi Desert (Pekin) to the outposts of the Russian armies on the Volga, and from Lhassa to the Arctic Circle.
In other words, the Dalai Lama had made himself spiritual master of a space about as large as the United States of America. This space-steppe land in the center, deserts and mountains on three sides, the frozen tundras of Siberia (then called Russian Tartary) to the north-was still held by the nomad tribes, the Tatars. They were not, however, the united Horde of Genghis Khan, but groups of separate tribes, herdsmen, with vague traditions of former battles.
Some were under Russian rule, others-in the Gobi region-were existing under the firm but benevolent hand of Ch'ien-lung, who was emperor of China at the time of China's greatest power. Some more of the Tatar clans were imbued with Muhammadanism, or were allies of the Dalai Lama. But they were-and are to this day-independent chaps. The Torguts especially-the clan called the Giants.
The Torguts, about 162o, during the brief empire of Galdan Khan in the mountains of Central Asia (the empire touched upon in the story "The Wolf-Chaser"), refused servitude and migrated west as far as the Russian border, on the Volga. There they built villages and remained, contented enough with fighting and cattle raising.
Meanwhile the various Muscovite states were absorbed into an expanding empire under the vigorous hand of Peter the Great and, after him, Catherine. The Torguts were threatened with taxation, and with seizure of their sons by the Russians. To escape servitude, a second time, they chose to migrate to their homeland at the headwaters of the River Ili, then unoccupied. Chien-lung had extended them an invitation to do so.
And they did it. At the time no one thought it possible; the distance was three thousand miles, it was then the dead of winter on the snow-bound steppe. They had the disadvantage of covering the coldest region of the journey in a temperature around zero and crossing the two deserts and the Alai Bagh in midsummer. They also had their herds with all their possessions to transport.
Estimates as to the numbers of the Torguts vary somewhat. Palias calculates that zso,ooo Torguts set out from the Volga; the annals of Chien-lung mentions 40,000 to 50,000 tents (more than 200,000 persons). But it is known that only 70,000 survived to reach the Ili. In other words, seven out of about seventeen souls lived through the journey.
You see, they had to fight their way; the tribes along the route, and especially to the south, were hostile, the Moslems vindictive, the Cossacks gave them two stiff battles, and their own lamas were deceitful-anxious to betray them if anything was to be gained by it.
This journey of the Giants has been called "a colossal trek." So it was-the last of the great men-movements of the world.
As to the rate of progress made by the Tatars, Ihave set it down as it happened. Thirty to fifty miles a day at times under the conditions sounds like a tall order. Yet it was done. Also the 150 miles of the Hunger Steppe, or desert, was traversed in three days. This was necessary because the "yellow" water was found to be undrinkable.
How they managed for fodder for the herds on the snow steppe I do not know. Of course the beasts died off rapidly and it is rather a miracle that a portion of the herds endured for the first half of the journey. As for the camels, they got along well enough and the ponies, it seems, dug into the snow at times for grass underneath.
On their journey they carried off a European, who appears in the story. This man was eventually released and sent back with a quota of followers, reaching the Russian border safe, after earning the confidence of the Tatars. The character of Zebek Dortshi, chief of the Red Camel clan, is puzzling, first because I have not seen elsewhere any record of a Tatar noble who betrayed his clan and the name itself has not a Tatar sound. So I have set him down as being one of the ilkhan chiefs, a man with Persian blood in him.
The cult of the bonpas among the Tibetan monks has a curious story. Magic originally had no part in the Buddhist ritual of the tsong-kapa. But the disciples of Buddhism who were establishing themselves in Tibet about rroo AD found the native devil-worship too strong to wipe out. So the home-bred conjurers, the mik-thru tse khen, were enrolled in the priesthood of the Buddhists. Eventually the devil-worshipers became the prime movers among the mountain monks. So the originally humane doctrines of the Sakyas became a most degenerate thing. Today in Lhassa there is a quarter of the town devoted to the magicians.
The Torguts are usually mentioned as "Kalmuks." The word Kalmuk is Turkish and means something like "remnant of a tree." It is a kind of nickname and today is applied to various native tribes in Turkestan and Mongolia. But the Tatar clan of the story called themselves Torgut, the Giants, and that is their rightful name.
July 20, 1923: "The Three Palladins"
Genghis Khan is almost unique among the conquerors of the world, because he came out of the desert. No armies were ready to his hand: no cities offered him the thews and sinews of war. He had had no schooling, of the book variety.
When he was fifteen or sixteen this chief was at the head of a tribe of forty thousand tents, about two hundred and fifty thousand souls, all told. He was surrounded by enemies. The northern Gobi Desert was-and is-much like our northwestern plains. A place of extremes of cold and heat, of a never-ending struggle for existence.
Out of these high prairies, just below the Arctic Circle, the Mongols rode to the conquest of China, and-as we knowthem today-the Himalayas, Afghanistan, Persia, and northern India. Eventuallyhis followers overcame the Russians, the Magyars, and defeated the Hungarians and the knighthood of Germany in Silesia.
We have gained the idea that the Mongols were a great mass of barbarians that conquered their enemies by weight of numbers and a vague kind of ferocity. As a matter of fact the Mongol Horde numbered only a hundred and fifty thousand horsemen. It had no infantry. Sometimes, of course, it had allies.
Instead of having numbers on his side, Genghis Khan usuallyhad the smaller army, and displayed strategic powers of the highest order. It is rather amusing that our histories should try to teach us that the Mongols and Tatars were unthinking barbarians when our language uses the phrase "catching a Tatar" to imply a clever trick.
To rank Genghis Khan with Caesar and Alexander would raise quite a clamor of protest. just by way of starting the debate-both the Roman and the Macedonian were generals of great empires that had been established before they were born, while the Mongol had only a tribe of herders and cattlemen to work with. Also Caesar and Alexander were products of a high civilization-both carefully schooled. Their conquests did not extend as far as those of the Mongols. (By the way, neither of them had to tackle the Great Wall of China.) The enemies they encountered were of a lower order of intelligence-always, in Caesar's case, usually in Alexander's. They did not find in their path such cities as Pekin, Samarkand, Bokhara, and Herat.
It usually happens that the feeling of the men of an army for their leader is the best possible indication of the leader's character. No man, the proverb runs, is a hero to his valet. Certainly no commander ever fooled his enlisted men.
While Caesar and Alexander were trusted and admired by the soldiers who followed them-Alexander particularly-both had to deal with mutinies at various times. Genghis Khan was beloved by his warriors. It is said that, in a battle, the Khan would give his horse to an injured man. One of his followers was frozen to death holding a fur windbreak over the sleeping king during a blizzard. In the annals of the Chinese-his enemies-appears the phrase that he led his armies like a god.
It looks as if Alexander were a greater strategist than the Mongol, but as a leader of men and as a conqueror Genghis Khan ranks ahead of him. And of Napoleon, too, for that matter. In comparing the achievements of men of other ages we have no standards except results. The empire of Napoleon fell to pieces before he died, and before that-there was Waterloo, you know. And then crossing the Alps is not quite the same as taking an army over the Himalayas.
The story of Genghis Khan is one of those things that grow on you in writing, and for the last year I seem to have gathered enough knowledge of the Mighty Manslayer to try to tell his story. As to that, it is a story that never will be told in full because the Mongols, unlike most nations, kept no annals. There are no "tombs" to be opened. So one has to proceed from Mongol myth-the few legends, anecdotes, that have come down to us-to the histories of the enemies of the Mongols. That is, to what the Persian, Arabic, Greek, Chinese, and Russian chroniclers have said about Genghis Khan.
No work for three years has been so full of interest in the doing! The tale is imaginative for the most part, but is based on events that actually took place. Prester John for instance-legendary as far as medieval Europe is concerned, but a real king in the annals of Asia.
The "pony express" of Genghis Khan in the Gobi is rather interesting for the reader who remembers the pony mail of the far West in the late sixties and seventies. I'm working up some information as far as possible on the relative speed made by the Mongol couriers. They covered more ground in a day than our express riders, but conditions were in their favor.
Mingan is one of the vague shadows of history-a prince of Cathay who acted as guide, councilor, and friend to Genghis Khan and his sons, and who, in fact, built up the wisest and most enduring part of the Mongol system of government. Ye Lui Kutsai Mingan is known to present-day historians as Yelui Chut-sai.
The Missing White Race
The missing white race of China. Now there's a subject that smacks loudly of adventure. Harold A. Lamb brings it up, and we know from his stories of Khlit the Cossack that Mr. Lamb is no stranger to the past of Asia. He and Major Quilty have been corresponding, and the following letter from Mr. Lamb is the result. Can any of you throw additional light? And if Dr. Beech is one of us I hope he'll tell us more about the strange people mentioned below.
New York City
Here's a point I'd like to pass along to the fellow members of CampFire.
Major T. Frank Quilty, Constructing Quartermaster, Columbus Quartermaster Interior Storage Depot, Columbus, Ohio, is the man who asks the question. This is the question, quoted from his letter.
According to recent investigations, the Blond White Race, or Nordies (our race), now confined to Western Europe, at one time spread across Asia as far as the confines of China. The farthest Eastern subdivision was known as the Wu-Suns or Hiung-Nu in Central Asia, referred to in Chinese annals because of their blue eyes, as the GreenEyed Devils.
Do you presume there is the slightest trace of the Nordic race left in these regions? Turkestan, according to Madison Grant (of the American Geographical Society), was at one time as blond as Sweden; the shores of the Caspian being, as regards race, as are now the shores of the Baltic. Bactria, "The Mother of Cities," has been, within historic times, a distinctively Nordic city.
A pretty big question, this. And the more you think of it the more interesting it gets. Did the white race at one time overrun Central Asia? And has it left traces which can be found today? Did the tribes of the great region from the headwaters of the Yenissei to the Indus, from the Caspian Sea to the western border of the desert of Gobi, have white forefathers?
Major Quilty says, in a second letter, that-whether Central Asia was ever dominantly Nordic-is open to debate. He adds that Bactria was found byAlexander to be inhabited by a distinctively Nordic people. And that there are-he believes-some Nordic traces still to be found in Afghanistan and in Turkestan-quite distinctively in the Mongolized Kirghizes.
Now, getting down to fundamentals, Madison Grant, who ought to know, explains that the Nordic race, unlike any other, has the long skull, light eyes, and, usually, blond hair. A tall race-that of (in ancient times) the Persians, Phrygians, Gauls, Goths, Franks, Saxons, Angles, Norse, and Normans.
It is the adventure race, as Major Quilty says, par excellence. And it's interesting to picture to ourselves the ancestors of the Vikings and Celts sweeping across the highlands of Mid-Asia, driving the round-skulled, slant-eyed, and stocky races before them.
Madison Grant says this actually happened, between 12oo and 600 ac. He mentions by way of proof the Aryan languages, Sanskrit and Old Persian, which were established in Northern India and Mesopotamia. Also the fact that remnants of an Aryan language have been found in Chinese Turkestan. (As to this, didn't the explorer Stein find, in the sand-buried cities near Khoten in Chinese Turkestan, traces of a language similar to Sanskrit?)
So much for language. Madison Grant, from the viewpoint of the scientist, adds: "Some traces of their (Nordic conquerors) blood have been found in the Pamirs and in Afghanistan. It may be that the stature of some of the Afghan hill tribes and of the Sikhs, and some of the facial characteristics of the latter, are derived from this source."
Language and history having given us, briefly-they probably have a lot more to say, if some one will print it out-their points, we'll ask the question of the explorers and adventurers.
Marco Polo says a lot about the mythical kingdom in Mid-Asia, of Prester John, the Christian. But this is no mention of an Aryan race. Marco Polo's story shows he saw, or heard of, an Asiatic people or tribe with an immensely wealthy and powerful ruler who may or may not have been a Christian.
