Pekin, which city also has about a million inhabitants. Sinan and Pekin, thus just within the Chinese Lowland, are capitals founded by conquerors from the Heartland.
Across the Iranian Upland into India there are also two natural ways, the one over the lofty but narrow spine of the Hindu Kush, down the Cabul VaUey, and over the terminal Kaibar Pass to the crossing of the Indus River at Attock; the other through Herat and Kandahar, round the ends of the Afghan ridges, and by the Bolan Gorge down to the Indus. Immediately east of the Indus River is the Indian Desert, extending from the ocean to within a short distance of the Himalaya, and the Bolan and Kaibar ways converge, therefore, through the ante-chamber of the Punjab to the inner entry of India, which is the passage left between the desert and the mountains. Here stands Delhi, at the head of the navigation of the Jumna-Ganges, and Delhi is a capital founded, like Sinan and Pekin in China, by conquerors from the Heartland. By these narrow and difficult ways both China and India have repeatedly been invaded from the Heartland, but the Empires thus founded have usually soon become detached from the rule of the Steppe-men. So was it, for instance, with the Moguls
