The shepherds tended their flocks in the steppes of Tartary, and 700 years passed away before another chief arose to summon the scattered tribes to his standard. During that period sundry insignificant dynasties succeeded each other on the outskirts of the Chinese dominions. The Turks also appeared in the interval, and established a formidable power, which lasted from the sixth to the eighth century. They issued from the Altai mountains, where they had served the Geougen Tartars who had overwhelmed the Huns after the death of Attila. The Turks, or Turki, reduced the Geougen, and, it is said, almost extirpated them. These Turks have been supposed to have been identical in race with the Huns who preceded, and the Mongols who followed, them.[10] But there is much reason to doubt their consanguinity.[11] The great skill in iron working for which the original Turks were distinguished, seems sufficient to mark a difference between them and the ancestors of the pure Mongols. They shaved the beard also in token of grief, and were considered by the Persians handsome men.[12] The Huns and Mongols had almost no beard, and in the eyes of all writers who have thought it worth while to describe their persons, they were remarkable for their deformity. [10] De Guignes. Hist. des Huns. [11] Memoirs of Baber. Erskine's Introd. [12] Un Hist. vol. iii. p. 365. It would, however, be a hopeless task to unravel the descent of the various races miscalled Tartars. The old Chinese records have preserved little more than the catalogue of kings and battles, and of the rise and fell of dynasties. The Tartar powers that have successively risen up in Asia have never been composed of a homogeneous race. Their names, even have generally been taken from some small tribe or family which accident rendered prominent; and the names Tartar, Turk, and Mongol, have been perpetuated and misapplied to armies and confederations of mixed races. The wanderings of these mixed tribes, the dissolution of empires which arose among them, and the reconstruction of these empires under new combinations, have constantly tended to the amalgamation in blood and language of races distinct in origin, but following the same nomadic habits. Their mode also of dealing with prisoners of war, and the conditions which they imposed on conquered nations, conduced still more to the fusion and confusion of races. It was unusual with the Huns or Mongols to spare their prisoners, unless they could employ them either as slaves or soldiers, or make profit by their ransom. The men were massacred, and the eligible women were appropriated by the conquerors. A supply of women was exacted as tribute from subject states. This gross indignity was ruthlessly imposed on the Chinese; and "a select band of the fairest maidens of China was annually devoted to the rude embraces of the Huns."[13] These practices must have tended greatly to enhance the perplexity