From Jerusalem the reader must now transport himself beyond the Caspian Sea eastward if he would visit the early home of the Turks or Turcomans, or Turkmans, against which the first crusade was chiefly directed. Their Scythian empire of the sixth century was long since dissolved, the tribes of the nations, each a powerful and independent kingdom, were scattered over the deserts of Central Asia from China to the Oxus and the Danube. Hordes of these wandering shepherds were about to overspread the kingdoms of Persia, shake the thrones of China and India, and erect a solid and splendid empire from Samarcand to the confines of Greece and Egypt. Their conquests were not to cease till their victorious crescents had been planted on the walls of Constantinople, and unfurled to the breeze from the dome of the most magnificent Christian temple of the world--the dome of St. Sophia. One of the greatest of Turkish princes was Mahmood, who reigned over the eastern provinces of Persia one thousand years after the birth of Christ, (A. D. 997-1028.) For him the title of Sultan was first invented--a word that signifies Lord or Master. His kingdom stretched from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the mouth of the river Indus. In a series of twelve expeditions he waged a "Holy War" against the Gentoos of Hindustan. Never was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the inclemency of the seasons, the heights of the mountains, the breadths of the rivers, the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the enemy or the formidable array of their elephants of war. But we cannot spare even a page to describe his swift and terrible campaigns that brought the power and wealth of India to his feet. As in his old age he surveyed the vast millions of gold and silver, the countless spoils in pearls and diamonds and rubies that filled his treasure house, even his boundless avarice might have been satiated for a moment. As he reviewed the state of his regular military forces which comprised one hundred thousand foot, fifty-five thousand horse and thirteen hundred elephants of battle; he wept the instability of human greatness, his grief embittered by the hostile progress of the Turcomans whom as allies he had introduced into the heart of his Persian kingdom. He was admonished of his folly by the reply of the chief of the race of Seljuk of whom he had inquired what supply of men he could furnish for military service. "If you send," replied Ishmael, "one of these arrows into our camp, fifty thousand of your servants will mount on horseback." "And if that number should not be sufficient?" "Send this second arrow to the horde of Balik and you will find fifty thousand more." "But," said Mahmood, dissembling his anxiety, "if I should stand in need of the whole force of your kindred tribes?"