An Essay on Gypsies. 345 



France to 1417 and says that they styled themselves Christians from 

 Lower Egypt, expelled thence by the Saracens, but that in reality 

 they came from Bohemia. From France, they passed into Spain 

 and Portugal, and afterwards under Henry VIII, into England. 

 Their hordes commonly consist of two or three hundred persons of 

 both sexes. < 



Although it is difficult to explain how they acquired the name of 

 Gypsies or Egyptians, it is certain they neither have an Egyptian ori- 

 gin, nor came from Egypt to Europe, as Crantz and Munster have 

 proved. 



Countries in which the Tzengaris are now found. 



These people constitute a part of the population of all the coun- 

 tries of Europe and of a large portion of Asia. In Africa, they 

 are found only in Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia, Soudan and Barbary. 

 They have never appeared in America. 



They are most numerous in Spain, Scotland, Ireland, Turkey, and 

 Hungary, but especially in Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, Scla- 

 vonia, Courland, Lithuania and the Caucasian provinces. 



In England they are still pretty numerous, but are found only in 

 distant places, seldom coming into the towns excepting in small com- 

 panies of two or three persons. In Germany, Sweden and Den- 

 mark, they have become rare, as also in Switzerland and the Low 

 Countries. In Italy, their numbers are diminished. In Spain, it is 

 said that there are fifty or sixty thousand of them, and in Hungary, 

 according to the best information, about fifty thousand. In Tran- 

 sylvania, they are the most numerous, for in a population of 1,720,000 

 souls there are reckoned 104,000 Tzengaris. I have no fear of ex- 

 aggeration in estimating the Tzengarian population of Europe at 

 nearly a million, in Africa, at 400,000; in India, at 1,500,000 and 

 about 2,000,000 in all the rest of Asia, for except in Asiatic Russia, 

 China, Siam, Annan and Japan, they are every where to be found. 

 Hence we may deem the total population of these people to be five 



millions. 



What a painful subject of reflection is it to think of so large a por- 

 tion of the human race, thrown as it were beyond the common rights 

 of nations; so many men wandering about without any claims which 

 can attach them to the soil, encamping in places remote from civiliza- 

 tion : living by theft and deception, and every where diffused, notwith- 

 standing the persecutions and contempt which are heaped upon them. 



G. Louis Domeny DeRienzi. 



