Salam, on arriving at the place, saw all these wonderful structures with his own eyes, and he was told by the people there that it was the custom of the governor of the castles already mentioned to take horse every Friday with ten others, and, coming to the gate, to strike the great bolt three times with a ponderous hammer weighing five pounds, when there would be heard a murmuring noise within, which were the groans of the Yagog and Magog people confined in the mountain. Indeed, Salam was told that the poor captives often appeared on the battlements above. Thus the real existence of this people was, in his opinion, fully proved; and even the story in respect to the diminutive size of the Magogs was substantiated, for Salam was told that once, in a high wind, three of them were blown off from the battlements to the ground, and that, on being measured, they were found but three spans high. This is a specimen of the tales brought home from remote countries by the most learned and accomplished travelers of those times. In comparing these absurd and ridiculous tales with the reports which are brought back from distant regions in our days by such travelers as Humboldt, Livingstone, and Kane, we shall perceive what an immense progress in intelligence and information the human mind has made since those days. CHAPTER III. YEZONKAI KHAN. 1163-1175 Yezonkai Behadr.--Orthography of Mongul names.--Great diversities.--Yezonkai's power.--A successful warrior.--Katay.--The Khan of Temujin.--Mongol custom.--Birth of Genghis Khan.--Predictions of the astrologer.--Explanation of the predictions.--Karasher.--Education of Temujin.--His precocity.--His early marriage.--Plans of Temujin's father.--Karizu.--Tayian.--Death of Yezonkai. The name of the father of Genghis Khan is a word which can not be pronounced exactly in English. It sounded something like this, _Yezonkai Behadr_, with the accent on the last syllable, Behadr, and the _a_ sounded like _a_ in _hark_. This is as near as we can come to it; but the name, as it was really pronounced by the Mongul people, can not be written in English letters nor spoken with English sounds. Indeed, in all languages so entirely distinct from each other as the Mongul language was from ours, the sounds are different, and the letters by which the sounds are represented are different too. Some of the sounds are so utterly unlike any sounds that we have in English that it is as impossible to write them in English characters as it is for us to write in English letters the sound that a man makes when he chirps to his horse or his dog, or when he whistles. Sometimes writers attempt to represent the latter sound by the word _whew_; and when, in reading a dialogue, we come to the word whew, inserted to express a part of what one of the speakers uttered, we understand by it that he whistled; but how different, after all, is the sound of the spoken word _whew_ from the whistling sound that it is intended to represent!