The appearance and establishment of the Turks in a land which was not that of their origin follows their life as nomad tribesmen of the vast steppeland of central Asia. They were men at large upon the world’s largest continent, the northerners of the east who naturally and unconsciously went forth in quest of the greater comforts afforded by southern regions. The flatlands which gave birth to their race lie open to the frozen gales of the north. Their continental climate, icy cold or burning hot in turn, is cut off from the tempering influences prevailing behind the folds of tertiary mountain piles to the south. As the steppemen migrated southward their gradually swelling numbers imparted density to the mass they formed because expansion on the east or west was denied them. China and the Chinese, admirably sheltered by barriers of deserts and mountains, stopped their easterly extension. Christian Russia stopped them on the west, though at a heavy cost to herself, for no obstacle had been raised by nature to meet their advance. The open plain of central Asia merges insensibly into that of north Europe. That is why incidentally Russia is half Tatar today. The Asiatic was forced upon her. She sacrificed herself by absorbing him into her bosom, saving Europe thereby from this eastern scourge, but forfeiting the advantages of progress. [Illustration: FIG. 58--A group of Turks who have none of the racial traits indicated by their name. The seated members in the foreground are typical inhabitants of the Anatolian plateau. The Greek type, closely resembling the Italian, appears in the background.] Cut off from east and west in this manner, the only alternative left to the Turk was to scale the plateau region of western Asia and to swarm into the avenues that led him to conquered territory where he succeeded in attaining power and organizing his undisciplined hosts into the semblance of a state. The presence of the Turk upon the land to which he conferred his Mongolian name and the very foundation of the Turkish state can in this manner be attributed to outward causes rather than to local development. It was essentially a process of transplantation. The consolidation and rise to power of the Ottoman Empire between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries were largely due to foreign conditions, for during that interval Europe was busily engaged in extirpating feudalism and the objectionable phases of medieval clerical influences from its soil.