The Mongolian family includes several branches, each subdivided into tribes, obeying chiefs of unequal rank. The most numerous people are the Kalkas, who occupy all the northern districts. The Mongols of the south, dwelling near the Great Wall, have been affected in their habits and manners by the neighbourhood of the Chinese; they have become industrious, and engage eagerly in commercial affairs. But the Kalkas, and the other tribes of the Great Gobi, are still nomadic, reckless, and indolent. Their religion is Buddhism; they profess for its head, the living Buddha or Great Lama (Dalai-lama, or Ocean-priest--_i.e._, wide as the ocean), a reverence and a blind obedience, which they also pay to the inferior lamas. "Under an external aspect of savagery," says Huc, "the Mongol hides a character full of mildness and kindly feeling; he passes suddenly from the wildest and most extravagant gaiety to a sadness which has nothing forbidding. Timid to excess in his ordinary life, when impelled by fanaticism or revenge, he displays an irresistible impetuosity of courage. He is simple and credulous as a child, and passionately loves stories and legends of the marvellous." The Mongols are ugly in feature, of the middle height, agile and robust; their sight is wonderfully keen, their hearing of an extraordinary acuteness.[40] Their wants are restricted to the indispensable necessities of life; of luxury they have no conception; their few pleasures are easily enjoyed; their instincts lead them rather in the path of good than of evil, and their defects, to use an expression of M. Huc's, are those of ill-trained children. They need, perhaps, but a well-directed impulse to develop their intellect, and guide them onward to a far higher civilization. In the great human family, it is true that as yet they do but fill the children's place, and it is impossible to say whether their national genius is capable of any great or lasting work. [Illustration] [Illustration] BOOK II. _THE DESERTS OF SAND:--THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND AFRICA._ CHAPTER I. THE RAINLESS DESERT--THE BED OF A SEA--THE DEAD SEA. The Sandy Deserts may with equal, nay, with greater accuracy, be entitled Salt Deserts, Rainless Deserts, Seas of Sand; for they present at one and the same time all these characters, and the three last, though less generally known than the first, are the most essential.