286 NATURAL HISTORY OP 



several nations of America take their source, while 

 they are claimed as the most ancient miners of the 

 Altai; a character which again recurs among their 

 kindred of the west. Industrious from necessity, the 

 scattered, less warlike tribes, with that Mongolic tact 

 for applying artificial aids in their labour, early found 

 walrus teeth sufficient to separate portions of meteoric 

 iron or aerolite, anciently more often found in large 

 masses than at present; with the aid of stones they 

 learnt to hammer it into tools, and subsequently into 

 the celebrated swords of the ancient north. Horns of 

 the elk, and antlers of rein deer, made ready shovels 

 and pick axes; and having already a knowledge of 

 meteoric metal, they soon found, that by digging, ores 

 might be brought up from beneath the surface.* 



The zone of earth given them as a patrimony being 

 intersected at right angles by many enormous rivers 

 by the Iceland or German Sea by the White Sea 

 by the still remaining portions of the Asiatic Mediter- 

 ranean by Behring's Straits and unceasing winters 

 causing many sufferings to migrators on the east and 

 west, they, like all other men, must have desired to 

 wander to more genial and passable regions; and 



Finnic race to have moved, at a remote age, through Asia 

 Minor towards Syria, and it may thus have formed one of 

 the early constituents of the Imilicon of Palestine. From 

 the Altaic gold mines to the west they were in all places 

 troglodytes and miners. 



* We find them tenants of Southern Siberia, up to the 

 vicinity of the Jenissei about Krasnojarsk, where Pallas 

 discovered an iron mine still retaining stone hammers and 

 brass tools, ascribed by the present Tahtars to the Tschutski. 



