the human race originated in the table-land of Armenia', I give the name of Central to the two sister-races, the Semitic and See also Winning's Manual, p. 124, sqq. Rask, über das Alter und die Echtheit der Zend-Sprache, p. 69, sqq., Hagen's Tr. And, for the affinity of the inhabitants of Northern Asia in particular, see Prichard on the Ethnography of High Asia (Journal of R. G. S. IX. 2, p. 192, sqq.). 1 The general reasons for this opinion are given in the New Cratylus, $64. But I am inclined to attach much more importance than some other ethnographers to the geography of Eden, as given in the book of Genesis; and I believe that the first seats of the human race are strictly defined by the four rivers there mentioned. Delitsch, in his recent Commentary on Genesis (p. 101, sqq.), has given a summary of all the leading views on the subject of these four rivers. In my opinion, the sacred writer wishes to indicate the immediate neighbourhood of the Caspian sea, a part of whose area may have corresponded originally to the once happy home of the family of man. At any rate, it is clear that physical changes have taken place in this region, and the book of Genesis implies that Eden no longer exists. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that the sacred writer directs our view to a district from which there is a divergence of four great rivers. It does not follow that they all rose in this country, but this is true of the two which we have no difficulty in identifying, namely, the or Euphrates, and the pan or Tigris. The sources of these rivers point to the south of Armenia, and as no other rivers of great consequence, or answering to the definitions of the book of Genesis, take their rise in this district, we are naturally led to seek the other two, or main branches, in the two great rivers, the Oxus, and the Rha or Wolga, which terminate in the Caspian sea, and by this enormous confluence form the boundary of Armenia on the side opposite to the sources of the other rivers. It is worthy of remark that Pliny (VI. 18) makes the Oxus rise in the lake or sea in which it now terminates; and the same mode of speaking may be conceded to the sacred writer. Now it can be shown that the Oxus and the Wolga, which are the two greatest rivers in the district, the only two, in fact, which can be compared with the Tigris and Euphrates, answer exactly to the description given of the in and the . With regard to the former, not only does the river Oxus bear the name of Jihon as well as Amoo, can only apply to this הַסוֹבֵב אֶת כָּל־אֶרֶץ כּוּשׁ but the description river which ran from the mountains of India (Strabo, p. 510) through the lake of Aral into the Caspian, and so furnished a northern boundary to the whole of the country which the Hebrews called Cush. The name of the, which signifies "water poured forth," or "over-flowing," corresponds to the meaning of Rha (péw, &c.), and to the character of the Volga as described by its Tartar name Ethel, "the bountiful." The reasons the Indo-Germanic, which formed themselves in Mesopotamia and Irân, and became the twin-mothers of human population, and the joint source and home of intellectual culture. To this central group, I oppose the Sporadic, as including all those nations and languages which were scattered over the globe by the first and farthest wanderers from the birth-place of our race. The process of successive peopling may be thus described. While the Indo-Germanic or Japhetic race was developing itself within the limits of Irân, and while the Semitic family was spreading from Mesopotamia to Arabia and Egypt, a great population of Tchudes, or Mongolians, Celts and Turanians, had extended its migrations from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean, and from Greenland over the whole north of America, Asia, and Europe, even as far as Britain, France, and Spain. In proportion, however, as these Celto-Turanians were widely spread, so in proportion were they thinly scattered; their habits were nomadic, and they never formed themselves into large or powerful communities. Consequently, when the Iranians broke forth from their narrow limits, in compacter bodies, and with superior physical and intellectual organisation, they easily mastered or drove before them these rude barbarians of the old world; and in the great breadth of territory which they occupied, the Turanians have formed only four great and independent states. the Mantchus in China, the Turks in Europe, and the Aztecs and the Peruvians in America. The student of ethnography must bear in mind some essential differences between the spread of those Sporadic tribes, which derived their origin from Irán, and to which the aboriginal population of Europe, Asia, and America is due, and those which emigrated from Mesopotamia and Arabia, and furnished a substratum of dispersed inhabitants for Africa. For while the which led Reland, Rosemmüller, and Raumer, to identify this river with the Phasis, apply with still greater force, if we go farther north, and seek their justification in the great stream which skirts the Ural mountains. The mineral wealth of this district is well known, and the fact, that the land of Chawiláh is found also in Arabia, does not prevent us from identifying this name with that of the Chwalissi who dwelt on the west of the Ural by the Volga, and to whom the Caspian owes its modern Russian name of Chwalinskoye More. Sporadic Syro-Arabians in Africa exhibit, as we go farther from the center of their dispersion, a successive degeneration in the passage of the Aramaic languages from the Abyssinian to the Galla and Berber, from this again to the Caffre, from the Caffre to the Hottentot, and from the Hottentot to the clucking of the savage Bushman, and while there is no later infusion of civilized Semitic elements until the conquest of North Africa by the Arabs; on the other hand, the Celto-Turanian tribes were overrun or absorbed at a very early period by successive or parallel streams of Sclavonians, Lithuanians, and Saxo-Goths, flowing freely and freshly from the north of Irân; and the latest of these emigrants, the High-Germans, found many traces of similarity in the Celtic tribes with which they ultimately came in contact. Whatever might have been the degradation of the Ugro-Turanian races in those regions where they were most thinly scattered, it is obvious that the Scythia of Herodotus, which was the highway of the earliest march of Indo-Germanic migration into Europe, could not have been, as Niebuhr supposed, mainly peopled by a Tchudic or Mongolian stock. And though the name of S-coloto or Asa-Galatæ, by which some of the Scythæ called themselves, may be regarded as pointing to a Celtic or Turanian intermixture, the great mass of the hordes which dwelt to the north of the Euxine must have consisted of Indo-Germanic tribes who conquered or ejected the Turanians; and I have no hesitation in referring these invaders, together with the Pelasgians of Greece and Italy, to different branches of the Sclavonian, Lithuanian, Saxo-Gothic, or generally Low Iranian stock. § 14. The Pelasgians were of Sclavonian origin. It has been proved that the Sarmatians belonged to the parent stock of the Sclavonians; and we find in the Sclavonian dialects ample illustrations of those general principles by which the Scythian languages seem to have been characterised. Making, then, a fresh start from this point, we shall find an amazing number of coincidences between the Sclavonian languages and the Pelasgian element of Greek and Latin: most of these have been pointed out elsewhere1; at present it is only necessary to call 1 New Crat. § 88. attention to the fact. So that, whichever way we look at it, we shall find new reasons for considering the Pelasgians as a branch of the great Sarmatian or Sclavonian race. The Thracians, Getæ, Scythæ, and Sauromatæ, were so many links in a long chain connecting the Pelasgians with Media; the Sauromata were at least in part Sclavonians; and the Pelasgian language, as it appears in the oldest forms of Latin, and in certain Greek archaisms, was unquestionably most nearly allied to the Sclavonian: we cannot, therefore, doubt that this was the origin of the Pelasgian people, especially as there is no evidence or argument to the contrary. § 15. Foreign affinities of the Umbrians, &c. But, to return to Italy, who were the old inhabitants of that peninsula? Whom did the Pelasgians in the first instance conquer or drive to the mountains? What was the origin of that hardy race, which, descending once more to the plain, subjugated Latium, founded Rome, and fixed the destiny of the world? The Umbrians, Oscans, Latins, or Sabines-for, in their historical appearances, we must consider them as only different members of the same family—are never mentioned as foreigners. We know, however, that they must have had their Transpadane affinities as well as their Pelasgian rivals. It is only because their Celtic substratum was in Italy before the Pelasgians arrived there, that they are called aborigines. The difference between them and the Pelasgians is in effect this: in examining the ethnical affinities of the latter we have tradition as well as comparative grammar to aid us; whereas the establishment of the Umbrian pedigree depends upon philology alone. § 16. Reasons for believing that they were the same race as the Lithuanians. Among the oldest languages of the Indo-Germanic family not the least remarkable is the Lithuanian, which stands first among the Sclavonian dialects1, and bears a nearer resemblance to Sanscrit than any European idiom. It is spoken, in different 1 See Pott, Et. Forsch. I. p. xxxiii. and his Commentatio de BorussoLithuanicæ tam in Slavicis quam Letticis linguis principatu. Halis Saxonum, 1837-1841. dialects, by people who live around the south-east corner of the d Baltic. One branch of this language is the old Prussian, which used to be indigenous in the Sam-land or "Fen-country" be-h tween the Memel and the Pregel, along the shore of the Curische Haf, and the Lithuanians are often called Samo-Geta or " FenGoths." Other writers have pointed out the numerous and striking coincidences between the people who spoke this language and the Italian aborigines1. Thus the connexion between the Sabine L Cures, Quirinus, Quirites, &c. and the old Prussian names Cures, Cour-land, Curische Haf, &c. has been remarked; it has been shown that the wolf (hirpus), which was an object of mystic reverence among the Sabines, and was connected with many of their ceremonies and some of their legends, is also regarded as ominous of good luck among the Lettons and Courlanders; the Sabine legend of the rape of the virgins, in the early history of Rome, was invented to explain their marriage ceremonies, which are still preserved among the Courlanders and Lithuanians, where the bride is carried off from her father's house with an appear ance of force; even the immortal name of Rome is found in the Prussian Romowo; and the connexion of the words Roma, Romulus, ruma lupa, and ruminalis ficus, is explained by the Lithuanian raumu, gen. raumens, signifying "a dug" or "udder?." 1 Perhaps the oldest observation of this affinity is that which is quoted by Pott (Commentatio, I. p. 6), from a work published at Leyden in 1642 by Michalo Lituanus (in rep. Pol. &c. p. 246): "nos Lithuani ex Italico sanguine oriundi sumus, quod ita esse liquet ex nostro sermone semi-latino et ex ritibus Romanorum vetustis, qui non ita pridem apud nos desiere, &c. Etenim et ignis (Lith. ugnis f.) et unda (wandů m.), aer (uras), sol (sáulé)... unus (wiênas)... et pleraque alia, idem significant Lithuano sermone quod et Latino." 283. 2 See Festus, pp. 266-8, Müller; and Pott, Etymol. Forsch. II. p. According to this etymology, the name Romanus ultimately identifies itself with the ethnical denomination Hirpinus. The derivation of the word Roma is, after all, very uncertain; and there are many who might prefer to connect it with Groma, the name given to the forum, or point of intersection of the main streets in the original Roma quadrata, which was also, by a very significant augury, called mundus (see Festus, p. 266; Dionys. I. 88; Bunsen, Beschreib. d. Stadt Rom, III. p. 81; and below, Ch. VII. § 6). The word groma or gruma, however, is not without its Lithuanian affinities. I cannot agree with Müller (Etrusk. II. p. 152), Pott (Etym. Forsch. II. 101), and Benfey (Wurzel-Lexikon, II. p. 143), who follow the old Sati Pres |