How people used to travel the world

We are often told that _Tartar_ is a vulgar European error. It is in any
case a very old one; nor does it seem to be of European origin, but rather
Armenian;[1] though the suggestion of Tartarus may have given it readier
currency in Europe. Russian writers, or rather writers who have been in
Russia, sometimes try to force on us a specific limitation of the word
_Tartar_ to a certain class of Oriental Turkish race, to whom the Russians
appropriate the name. But there is no just ground for this. _Ttr_ is
used by Oriental writers of Polo”s age exactly as Tartar was then, and is
still, used in Western Europe, as a generic title for the Turanian hosts
who followed Chinghiz and his successors. But I believe the name in this
sense was unknown to Western Asia before the time of Chinghiz. And General
Cunningham must overlook this when he connects the _Ttarya_ coins,
mentioned by Arab geographers of the 9th century, with ‘the Scythic or
Ttr princes who ruled in Kabul’ in the beginning of our era. Tartars on
the Indian frontier in those centuries are surely to be classed with the
Frenchmen whom Brennus led to Rome, or the Scotchmen who fought against
Agricola.