of the Human Species. 323 



the purity of their stock, though their features are those of the 

 Mongoles and Kalmucs. -'^t '■'" -r 



" Before I take leave of the Caucasian race, I shall offer 

 some further remarks on this designation. It is applied, as.we 

 are informed, to nations of this class, because their traditions 

 deduce them from Mount Caucasus. But is this really a fact ? 

 The mountains of Asia Minor, of Thrace, and of Hellas, are 

 all famous in Grecian story. Mountains were of old, in the 

 simple and primitive age, which long preceded the erection of 

 temples consecrated to the worship of the unseen powers, which 

 all nations venerated. The tops of Olympus and Mount Mem, 

 in the poetry of Greece and India, were the resting-places 

 where Father Zeus and Indra descended from the clouds to con- 

 verse with mortals. Caucasus came in for its share in the gene- 

 ral respect paid to high places. According to a story, of which 

 it is difficult to conjecture the meaning, it was the dwelling-place 

 of Prometheus, where that ambiguous personage, by turns a 

 Titan, a teacher of mechanical arts, and a maker of man, and 

 then a natural philosopher,- is said to have watched the move- 

 ments of the heavenly bodies. I cannot remember any tradition 

 among the fabulists or historians of Greece, which admits of a 

 construction answering to the hypothesis of M. Cuvier, or de- 

 ducing the human race from Mount Caucasus. Nor can any 

 thing more to the purpose be traced in the m)rthology of the 

 oriental nations. The authentic narrative of the Hebrews lead 

 us certainly to Mount Ararat, in Armenia, for the resting-place 

 of the ark ; but that is far from Caucasus. 



" Another objection to the term Caucasian, as applied to an 

 assemblage of nations consisting principally of the Indo-European 

 and Semitic tribes, arises from the fact, that the chain of Cau- 

 casus has been from immemorial time the seat of nations who 

 are proved by their languages to be entirely distinct from both 

 of these celebrated races. V< The' Idioms of the real Caucasian 

 nations have been carefdlly 'examined by Julius Klaproth. 

 The result has been a reduction of these numerous dialects to a 

 'fd<^ bri^nal languages, all of which, except that of the Ossetes, 

 "aVe destitute of any analogy to the Indo-European idioms. 

 The Ossetes, indeed, speak a dialect resembling some of the 

 Jknguf^gek of that st6ck ; fhey ai*e an inconsiderable tribe, who 



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