The inhabitants of the vast countries of Central Asia, extending from the Northern Ocean to the confines of Persia, India and China, and from the Gulf of Corea to the shores of the Caspian, have received from the nations of Europe the undistinguishing name of Tartarsa. This appellation, unknown to most of the people to whom it is applied, is a corruption of the Oriental Tatar, the designation of a tribe derived, according to Abulghazi and other Mohammedan authors, from a prince of that name, who, with his brother Mongol, was descended from the race of Turk. Some of the Eastern writers have derived the name Tatar from a river, on the banks of which was the original seat of this tribe; but all coincide in employing the term as the designation of a particular body of people, and not as that of a race. The alteration of this name into Tartar, by the Latin writers of the thirteenth century, appears to have arisen from the similarity of its sound to their own Tartarus; the corruption being rendered somewhat appropriate by the terrors which the incursions of Tchingis Khan and his descendants excited.