to make slaves, is in the eye of the Turkoman an honourable business, by which he has lived for centuries. He considers those who think otherwise as stupid or mad, and yields in such a manner to this passion that he often commences plundering his own tribe, indeed, often his own family, in case he is baulked in foreign forays. As a very weak apology, it may be argued that they inhabit the wildest and most savage countries, where even keeping of cattle gives only a scanty revenue: still the fruits of their detestable trade hardly ever alleviate their pressing poverty, for they are just as dirty niggards, as avaricious, and starve often in the possession of riches as much as the poorest being. The Œzbegs play the fashionable among their fellow-races in Turkestan. They are not a little proud of the education which, through Islamitish civilisation, they obtained, and, starting from this point of superiority, wish to govern their nomadic brethren. Highly praiseworthy with them is their tenacious adherence to so many good points of their national character; which, in other places, is too easily transformed and disgraced by Islam. With the Œzbeg, there is, in spite of the hypocrisy and pretended holiness, which endeavour to spread themselves by Mohamedanism, still always very much honesty, uprightness, and Turkish open-heartedness, in which qualities they are considerably to be distinguished from the reprobate and vicious Tadjiks, and are truly worthy to govern the latter. The Œzbeg is, as far as personal knowledge has shown to me, the only Turk, from China to the Danube, who represents all the best side of the national character of the Turks. [46] Radloff also confirms the same in his Report upon the Acad. Imp. of Sciences of St. Petersb. See the bulletin of the society named, vol. vi., p. 418. CHAPTER XVII. IRANIANS. The Turanian people, but especially the already mentioned Turko-Tartaric tribes, have made themselves renowned in antiquity by their warlike disposition, and the wild untractable rudeness of their habits; but the Iranians, in strong contrast with these, have always been known for the delicacy of their habits and a brilliant state of civilisation. The former have ever appeared among their neighbours as spoilers, destroyers, and plunderers; the latter, on the contrary, as civilisers, propagators of the arts, and milder social relations.