of the hyena and the baboon. They tattooed their cheeks, to prevent
the growth of their beards. They were short, thick-set, and with back
bones curved almost into a semicircle. Herbs, roots and raw meat they
devoured, tearing their food with their teeth or hewing it with their
swords. To warm and soften their meat, they placed it under their
saddles when riding. Nearly all their lives they passed on horseback.
Wandering incessantly over the vast plains, they had no fixed
habitations, but warmly clad in the untanned skins of beasts, like the
beasts they slept wherever the night found them. They had no religion
nor laws, no conception of ideas of honor; their language was a
wretched jargon, and in their nature there seemed to be no moral sense
to which compassion or mercy could plead.

Such were the Huns as described by the ancient historians. The Goths
struggled against them in vain. They were crushed and subjugated. The
king of the Goths, Hermanric, in chagrin and despair, committed
suicide, that he might escape slavery. Thousands of the Goths, in
their terror, crowded down into the Roman province of Thrace, now the
Turkish province of Romania. The empire, then in its decadence, could
not drive them back, and they obtained a permanent foothold there. The
Huns thus attained the supremacy throughout all of northern Europe.
There were then very many tribes of diverse names peopling these vast
realms, and incessant wars were waged between them. The domination
which the Huns attained was precarious, and not distinctly defined.

The terrible Attila ere long appears as the king of these Huns, about
the middle of the fifth century. This wonderful barbarian extended his
sway from the Volga to the Rhine, and from the Bosphorus to the shores
of the Baltic. Where-ever he appeared, blood flowed in torrents. He
swept the valley of the Danube with flame and sword, destroying