186 COSMOS. 



from entering into relations of direct intercourse with the in- 

 habitants of the interior of Asia. Movements, which ema- 

 nated from the remotest parts of China, produced the most 

 rapid, although not long-persisting changes in the political 

 condition of the vast territories which lie between the volcanic 

 celestial mountains (Thian-schan) and the chain of the Kuen- 

 lun in the north of Thibet. A Chinese expedition subdued 

 the Hiungnu, levied tribute from the small territory of Kho- 

 tan and Kaschgar, and carried its victorious arms as far as 

 the eastern shores of the Caspian. This great expedition, 

 which was made in the time of Vespasian and Domitian, was 

 headed by the general Pantschab, under the Emperor Mingti, 

 of the dynasty of Han, and Chinese writers ascribe a grand 

 plan to the bold and fortunate commander, maintaining that 

 he designed to attack the Roman empire (Tathsin), but was 

 deterred by the admonitory counsel of the Persians.* Thus 

 there arose connections between the shores of the Dead Sea, 

 the Schensi, and those territories on the Oxus in which an 

 animated trade had been prosecuted from an early age with 

 the nations inhabiting the coasts of the Black Sea. 



The direction in which the stream of immigration inclined 

 in Asia was from east to west, while in the New Continent 

 it was from north to south. A century and a half before our 

 era, about the time of the destruction of Corinth and Car- 

 thage, the first impulse to that " immigration of nations," 

 which did not, however, reach the borders of Europe until 

 five hundred years afterward, was given, by the attack of the 

 Hiungnu (a Turkish race confounded by De Guignes and Jo- 

 hann. Miiller with the Finnish Huns) on the fair-haired and 

 blue-eyed Yueti (Getaj ?), probably of Indo-Germanic descent,! 

 and on the Usun, who dwelt near the wall of China. In this 

 manner the stream of population flowed from the upper river 



* Klaproth, Tableaux Historiques de I'Asie, 1826, p. 65-67. 



t To this fair-haired, blue-eyed Indo-Germanic, Gothic, or Arian race 

 of Eastern Asia, belong the Usun, Tingling, Hutis, and great Yueti. The 

 last are called by the Chinese writers a Thibetian nomadic race, who, 

 three hundred years before our era, migrated to the district between 

 the upper course of the Hoang-ho and the snowy mountains of Nan- 

 schan. I here recall this descent, as the Seres (Plin., vi., 22) are also 

 described as "rutilis comis et cseruleis oculis." (Compare Ukert, 

 Geogr. der Oriech. und Romer, th. iii., abth. 2, 1845, s. 275.) We are 

 indebted for the knowledge of these fair-haired races (who, in the 

 most eastern part of Asia, gave the first impulse to what has been called 

 "the great migration of nations") to the researches of Abel Eemusat 

 and Klaproth, which belong to the most brilliant historical discoveries 

 of our age. 



