Note 1083 — Chapter XIV · —Plains, Steppes And Deserts

The raided territory, if a modern civilized state, organizes its border communities into a native mounted police, as the English have done in Bornu, Sokoto and the Egyptian Sudan, and as the Russians did with their Cossack riders along the successive frontiers of Muscovite advance into the steppes; or it takes into its employ, as we have seen, the nearest nomad tribes to repress or punish every hostile movement beyond. Among the ancient states the method was generally different. Since the nomad invaders came with their flocks and herds, a barrier often sufficed to block their progress. For this purpose Sesostris built the long wall of 1500 stadia from Pelusium to Heliopolis as a barricade against the Arabians.1083 Ancient Carthage constructed a ditch to check the depredations of the nomads of Numidia.1084 The early kings of Assyria built a barrier across the plains of the Euphrates above Babylon to secure their dominion from the incursions of the desert Medes.1085 In the fifth century of our era, the "Red Wall" was constructed near the northern frontier of Persia as a bulwark against the Huns. It stretched for a hundred and fifty miles from the Caspian Sea at the ancient port of Aboskun eastward to the mountains, and thus enclosed the populous valley of the Gurgen River.1086 In remote ages the neck of the Crimean Peninsula was fortified by a wall against the irruptions of the Tauro-Scythians.1087 The Russians early in their national history used the same means of defense against Tartar incursions. One wall was built from Pensa on the Sura River to Simbirsk on the Volga, just south of Kazan; another, further strengthened by a foss and palisades, extended from the fortress of Tsaritzin at the southern elbow of the Volga across the fifty-mile interval to the Don, and was still defended in 1794 by the Cossacks of the Don against the neighboring Kirghis hordes.1088 The classic example of such fortifications against pastoral nomads, however, is the Great Wall of China.