38

TUB DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.1.X V.

the deserts of Russia and Tartary. This re-mote, and perhaps imaginary danger was avert-ed by the submission of the sultan of Egypt ;the honours of the prayer and the coin attestedat Cairo the supremacy of Timour ; and a raregift of a giraffe, or camelopard, and nine os-triches, represented at Samarcand the tribute ofthe African world. Our imagination is not lessastonished by the portrait of a Mogul, who, inhis camp before Smyrna, meditates, and almostaccomplishes, the invasion of the Chinese em-pire. p Timour was urged to this enterprise bynational honour and religious zeal. The tor-rents which he had shed of mussulman bloodcould be expiated only by an equal destructionof the infidels; and as he now stood at the gatesof paradise, he might best secure his glorious en-trance, by demolishing the idols of China , found-ing moschs in every city, and establishing theprofession of faith in one God , and his prophetMahomet. The recent expulsion of the houseof Zingis was an insult on the Mogul name ; andthe disorders of the empire afforded the fairestopportunity for revenge. The illustrious Hong-vou, founder of the dynasty of Ming, died fouryears before the battle of Angora; and his grand-son, a weak and unfortunate youth, was burntin his palace, after a million of Chinese hadperished in the civil war. q Before he evacu-

p See Sherefeddin, 1 v, c. 4, who marks, in a just itinerary, the roadto China , which Arabshah (tom. ii, c. 33) paints in vague and rhetori.cal colours.

q Synopsis Hist. Sinicse, p. 74-76 (in the fourth part of the Relations

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