5.
1. First of all, we may say that the very region into which they came, tended to their civilization. Of course the peculiarities of soil, climate, and country are not by themselves sufficient for a social change, else the Turcomans would have the best right to civilization; yet, when other influences are present too, climate and country are far from being unimportant. You may recollect that I have spoken more than once of the separation of a portion of the Huns from the main body, when they were emigrating from Tartary into Europe, in the time of the Goths.[21] These turned off sharp to the South immediately on descending the high table-land; and, crossing the Jaxartes, found themselves in a fertile and attractive country, between the Aral and their old country, where they settled. It is a peculiarity of Asia that its regions are either very hot or very cold. It has the highest mountains in the world, bleak table-lands, vast spaces of burning desert, tracts stretched out beneath the tropical sun. Siberia goes for a proverb for cold: India is a proverb for heat. It is not adequately supplied with rivers, and it has little of inland sea. In these respects it stands in singular contrast with Europe. If then the tribes which inhabit a cold country have, generally speaking, more energy than those which are relaxed by the heat, it follows that you will have in Asia two descriptions of people brought together in extreme, sometimes in sudden, contrariety with each other, the strong and the weak. Here then, as some philosophers have argued,[22] you have the secret of the despotisms and the vast empires of which Asia has been the seat; for it always possesses those who are naturally fitted to be tyrants, and those also whose nature it is to tremble and obey. But we may take another, perhaps a broader, view of the phenomenon. The sacred writer says: "Give me neither riches nor beggary:" and, as the extremes of abundance and of want are prejudicial to our moral well-being, so they seem to be prejudicial to our intellectual nature also. Mental cultivation is best carried on in temperate regions. In the north men are commonly too cold, in the south too hot, to think, read, write, and act. Science, literature, and art refuse to germinate in the frost, and are burnt up by the sun.
Now it so happened that the region in which this party of Huns settled themselves was one of the fairest and most fruitful in Asia. It is bounded by deserts, it is in parts encroached on by deserts; but viewed in its length and breadth, in its produce and its position, it seems a country equal, or superior, to any which that vast continent, as at present known, can show. Its lower portion is the extensive territory of Khorasan, the ancient Bactriana; going northwards across the Oxus, we come into a spacious tract, stretching to the Aral and to the Jaxartes, and measuring a square of 600 miles. It was called in ancient times Sogdiana; in the history of the middle ages Transoxiana, or "beyond the Oxus;" by the Eastern writers Maver-ul-nere, or Mawer-al-nahar, which is said to have the same meaning; and it is now known by the name Bukharia. To these may be added a third province, at the bottom of the Aral, between the mouth of the Oxus and the Caspian, called Kharasm. These, then, were the regions in which the Huns in question took up their abode.
The two large countries I first mentioned are celebrated in all ages for those characteristics which render a spot desirable for human habitation. As to Sogdiana, or Maver-ul-nere, the region with which we are specially concerned, the Orientals, especially the Persians, of the medieval period do not know how to express in fit terms their admiration of its climate and soil. They do not scruple to call it the Paradise of Asia. "It may be considered," says a modern writer,[23] "as almost the only example of the finest temperate climate occurring in that continent, which presents generally an abrupt transition from burning tropical heat to the extreme cold of the north." According to an Arabian author, there are just three spots in the globe which surpass all the rest in beauty and fertility; one of them is near Damascus, another seems to be the valley of a river on the Persian Gulf, and the third is the plain of Sogdiana. Another writer says: "I have cast my eyes around Bokhara, and never have I seen a verdure more fresh or of wider extent. The green carpet mingles in the horizon with the azure of the sky."[24] Abulfeda in like manner calls it "the most delightful of all places God has created." Some recent writer, I think, speaks in disparagement of it.[25] And I can quite understand, that the deserts which must be passed to reach it from the south or the north may betray the weary traveller into an exaggerated praise, which is the expression both of his recruited spirits and of his gratitude. But all things are good only by comparison; and I do not see why an Asiatic, having experience of the sands which elsewhere overspread the face of his continent, should for that reason be ill qualified to pronounce that Sogdiana affords a contrast to them. Moreover, we have the experience of other lands, as Asia Minor, which have presented a very different aspect in different ages. A river overflows and turns a fruitful plain into a marsh; or it fails, and turns it into a sandy desert. Sogdiana is watered by a number of great rivers, which make their way across it from the high land on its east to the Aral or Caspian. Now we read in history of several instances of changes, accidental or artificial, in the direction or the supply of these great water-courses. I think I have read somewhere, but cannot recover my authority, of some emigration of the inhabitants of those countries, caused by a failure of the stream on which they depended. And we know for certain that the Oxus has been changed in its course, accidentally or artificially, more than once. Disputes have arisen before now between the Russian Government and the Tartars, on the subject of one of these diversions of the bed of a river.[26] One province of Khorasan, which once was very fertile, is in consequence now a desert It may be questioned, too, whether the sands of the adjacent deserts, which are subject to violent agitation from the action of the wind, may not have encroached upon Sogdiana. Nor should it be overlooked that this rich country has been subjected to the same calamities which have been the desolation of Asia Minor; for, as the Turcomans have devastated the latter, so, as I have already had occasion to mention, Zingis swept round the sea of Aral, and destroyed the fruits of a long civilization.
Even after the ravages of that conqueror, however, Timour and the Emperor Baber, who had a right to judge of the comparative excellence of the countries of the East, bear witness to the beauty of Sogdiana. Timour, who had fixed his imperial seat in Samarcand, boasted he had a garden 120 miles in extent. Baber expatiates on the grain and fruit and game of its northern parts; of the tulips, violets, and roses of another portion of it; of the streams and gardens of another. Its plains are said by travellers to abound in wood, its rivers in fish, its valleys in fruit-trees, in wheat and barley, and in cotton.[27] The quince, pomegranate, fig, apricot, and almond all flourish in it. Its melons are the finest in the world. Mulberries abound, and provide for a considerable manufacture of silk. No wine, says Baber, is equal to the wine of Bokhara. Its atmosphere is so clear and serene, that the stars are visible even to the verge of the horizon. A recent Russian traveller says he came to a country so smiling, well cultivated, and thickly peopled, with fields, canals, avenues of trees, villages, and gardens, that he thought himself in an enchanted country. He speaks in raptures of its melons, pomegranates, and grapes.[28] Its breed of horses is celebrated; so much so that a late British traveller[29] visited the country with the special object of substituting it for the Arab in our Indian armies. Its mountains abound in useful and precious produce. Coal is found there; gold is collected from its rivers; silver and iron are yielded by its hills; we hear too of its mines of turquoise, and of its cliffs of lapis lazuli,[30] and its mines of rubies, which to this day are the object of the traveller's curiosity.[31] I might extend my remarks to the country south of the Oxus and of its mountain range, the modern Affghanistan. Though Cabul is 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, it abounds in pomegranates, mulberries, apples, and fruit of every kind. Grapes are so plentiful, that for three months of the year they are given to the cattle.