148 COSMOS. 







repeated fable of the gigantic ants, is situated within a more 

 southern latitude of 35 J or 37. This region must, according 

 to one of two combinations, be situated either in the Thibetian 

 highlands east of the Bolor chain, between the Himalaya and 

 Kuen-lun, west of Iskardo, or north of the latter mountain 

 chain toward the desert of Gobi, which has likewise been de- 

 scribed as an auriferous district by the accurate Chinese ob- 

 server and traveler Hiuen-thsang, who lived ai the beginning 

 of the seventh century of our era. How much more accessi- 

 ble must the gold of the Arirnaspes and Massagetae have been 

 to the traders in the Milesian colonies on the northern shores 

 of the Euxine ! I have alluded to these sources of wealth 

 lor the purpose of not omitting to mention a fact which may 

 be regarded as an important and still active result of the open- 

 ing of the Euxine, and of the first advance of the Greeks to- 

 ward the East. 



The great event of the Doric migrations, and of the return 

 of the Heraclidse iuto Peloponnesus, which was productive of 

 such important changes, falls about one hundred and fifty 

 years after the demi-mythical expedition of the Argonauts, 

 which is synonymous with the opening of the Euxine to Greek 

 navigation and commercial intercourse. This navigation si- 

 multaneously gave occasion to the founding of new states and 

 new governments, and to the establishment of a colonial sys 

 tem designating an important period in the life of the Hel- 

 lenic races, and it has further been most influential in extend- 

 ing the sphere of cosmical views, based upon intellectual cul- 

 ture. Europe and Asia thus owed their more intimate con- 

 nectioa to the establishment of the colonies, which formed a 

 continuous chain from Sinope (Dioscurias) and the Tauric 

 Panticapseurn to Saguntum and Gyrene, the latter of which 

 was founded by the inhabitants of the rainless island of Thera. 



No nation of antiquity possessed more numerous, and, on 

 the whole, more powerful colonial cities than the Greeks. It 

 must, however, be remembered, that a period of four hundred 

 or five hundred years intervened between the establishment 

 of the most ancient ^Eolian colonies, among which Mytilene 

 and Smyrna were pre-eminently distinguished, and the founda- 

 tion of Syracuse, Croton, and Gyrene. The Indians and Ma- 

 layans made only weak attempts to found colonies on the east- 

 ern coast of Africa, in Zokotora (Dioscorides), and in the South 

 Asiatic Archipelago. Among the Phrenicians a highly-devel- 



lands, the ants bring together heaps of shining grains of hyalite, which 

 I was able to collect out of their hillocks. 



