The Giliaks, who inhabit the north of Saghalien, and the mainland to the north of the mouth of the Amur, suggest by their traits sometimes the Ainus, sometimes the Tunguses, but they are brachycephalic. They are a people of fishers, living on the banks of rivers and the sea, in the winter in huts half buried in the ground, in the summer in little houses on piles. The Giliaks are readily disposed to trade, and are distinguished by their taste for ornaments. Their number hardly exceeds 5000 individuals.[408]
The Tunguses, while speaking a particular language, exhibit the Mongol type, softened by intermixtures with the primitive inhabitants (Palæasiatics?) of their territory, which extends from the Arctic Ocean to the 40th degree of north latitude, and from the Yenisei to the Pacific Ocean. Their number can hardly exceed 50,000 individuals over this immense stretch of country. They are divided into southern and northern Tunguses and maritime Tunguses or Lamuts. The river Amur forms the approximate boundary between the first two sections of Tunguses. The Lamuts occupy the shores of the sea of Okhotsk, the north-west of Kamtchatka, and extend more to the west to the river Iana. The Northern Tunguses are split up into several tribes, of which the following are the principal, going from east to west:—The Olchas or Mangoon, at the mouth of the Amur; their congeners the Oroks, in the north of the island of Saghalien; the Orochons, of a very pure Tunguse type; the Manegres (Fig. [43]), and the “Olennyié” Tunguses, or the Tunguses with reindeer (Figs. [115] and [116]). As to the southern Tunguses, they comprise the Goldes of the lower Amur and Ussuri, of a very pure type, and having a fairly well developed ornamental art; the Oroches of the coast; and lastly the Solon-Daurs, very much intermixed with the Mongols, of which colonies exist in the Kuldja.
The Manchus, reduced to a small number, belong by their dialect as well as by their physical type to the Tunguse group. They are being absorbed more and more by the Chinese, and hardly form a tenth part of the population of the country which bears their name (Pozdniéef). It is probable that the Niu-chi or Yu-chi of Shan-alin and Sien-pi on the northern border of Corea, mentioned in the Chinese annals, were Tunguse tribes.
The type which predominates among the Tunguses represents the secondary race called North Mongolian and characterised by mesocephaly or a slight sub-dolichocephaly, and by a rather elongated face. The stature varies; the Orochons are of average stature and the Manchus very tall, etc.[409]
II. PEOPLES OF CENTRAL ASIA.—The immense central Asiatic region, whose waters have no outlet towards the sea, is formed principally of denuded table-lands (Thibet) or of plains, sometimes grassy, sometimes desert (Mongolia, Turkestan). It is inhabited for the most part by populations which may be grouped from the linguistic point of view under three heads, Turks, Mongols, Thibetans.[410]
The peoples speaking the different Turkish dialects who are called Turco-Tatars or Turanians are scattered over an immense area comprising half of Asia and a large portion of Eastern Europe, from the Arctic Ocean (Yakuts) to Kuen-lun (Polus) and Ispahan (Turkomans of Persia), from the banks of the Kolima and the Hoang-ho (Yegurs) to Central Russia (Tatars of Kasimov) and Macedonia (Osmanli Turks). All these peoples may be gathered together into three great groups: eastern, central, and western.[411]
The eastern group comprises the Yakuts, who have preserved in its purity the ancient Turco-Uigurian language, but who in type, manners, and customs show the influence of contiguity with the Palæasiatics; then the various tribes of non-Yeniseian “Tatars” (see p. [366]) of Siberia, like the Altaians (called Kalmuks of Altai, although they have nothing in common with the true Kalmuks), nomads who have recently adopted settled habits, like the Teleuts (or Kara-Kalmuks), likewise nomads, or the Tatars of Siberia, divided, according to their habitat, into Tatars of the Baraba steppes, Tatars of Irtish, of Tobol, etc.[412]
To this group must be added the Taranchi and other “Turks” of East Turkestan, as well as the Polus of the northern slope of the Kuen-lun, more or less mingled with Indo-Afghan elements; the Yegurs of the province of Kan-su in China, etc.[413]
The central group comprises, in the first place, the Kirghiz-Kazak of the plains between the Irtish and the Caspian, with the Kara-Kirghiz of the Tian-chan mountains, typical nomads who under a Mussulman veneer have preserved many ancient Turkish animist customs;[414] then the Uzbegs and Sartes, villagers or citizens, more or less mingled with Iranian elements, of Russian Turkestan; and finally the Tatars of the Volga, or of European Russia. Among these last, the so-called Kazan Tatars, descendants of the Kipchaks, must be specially mentioned. Arriving on the banks of the Volga in the thirteenth century, they intermingled there with the Bulgarians. They differ from the Astrakhan Tatars (Figs. [107] and [108]), descendants of the Turco-Mongols of the Gold horde, mixed with the Khazars, as well as from the Nogai of the Crimea,[415] representatives of whom we find also in the Caucasus, near Astrakhan, and in Lithuania, where, while remaining Mussulmans, they have adopted the language and the garb of Poles. With this group we must connect the Bashkir-Mesthcheriaks, a tribe intermixed with Turkish, Mongol, and Ugrian elements; and their congeners the Shuvashes, as well as the Kumyks, the Karachai, the Kabards, or Tatars of the Caucasus mountains, distinct from the true Kabards.