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129.

monuments of  Genghis Kahn's capital, little has been accomplished except from the philological point of view. There is no doubt, however, in the minds of any of the men who have been active in this region, that a small amount of systematic excavation would reveal tangible records of Mongol culture from a period just before the time when these conquerors of China became willing converts to Chinese civilization.
     More important than this material, is the known fact that there are in the West and South of Mongolia, evidences of the stock which forced China to become an Empire and kept her continually on the defensive, a thousand years before Christ. There were the Tartar peoples who were the ancestors of the men of Shansi Province, who supplied the jade reckoned more precious than gold, whose hordes again and again penetrated the imperial palaces within the capital cities of Honan, who were the mercenaries hired by weakling Chinese states to fight other Hun and Tartar tribes and who gave to China the house of Topa to rule the Wei dynasty and spread Buddhist art and literature as well as Indian philosophy clear across the country to the ocean's edge and the Islands of Japan.
     I believe that a thorough study of ancient China cannot be contemplated without including this people, and that to pursue this investigation would be to undertake a work which would command the attention of scholars as well as of the public to whom we must look for support. I remembered that M. Maitre had strongly advised that Urga be included in my investigations and I recalled the uncollated evidence of early culture which I saw at St. Petersburg in addition to the Kozloff find of