312 NATURAL HISTORY OP 



Venicinum. They repeated, in this manner, the com- 

 mercial policy of the Phoenicians, whose name may 

 not be unconnected with the Veneti, and anticipated 

 what the Baltic Vandal Lombards again restored, 

 in the middle ages, under the form of Lombard streets, 

 in most commercial cities of mediaeval Europe. 



They had a commercial intercourse through Russia, 

 and with the Greek colony at Olbio, on the Borys- 

 thenes. It may even be no chimerical supposition, 

 that it was from the Baltic cities that the Hyperborean 

 annual donation came to Delos, which Herodotus and 

 others have noticed. According to Took, the Per- 

 mians had a barter trade with the Indo-Persians, by 

 the Volga and Kama to Tscherdyn, on the Kolva, 

 where they received the goods, and carried them up to 

 Petchora, in exchange for furs. Thus, the presence of 

 Hindoo opinions and idols may be accounted for, in 

 the poems and antique remains among the Finnic 

 nations. The entirely foreign commencement of the 

 above named cities, is proved, among other indica- 

 tions, by their having alone, of all the Baltic nations, 

 temples for national idols, while other Finns had only 

 sacred hedged localities for their divinities and reli- 

 gious ceremonies.* As already stated, there were two 

 distinct races successively inhabitants of Wineta and 

 fhe other neutral trading communities on the south of 



* Mone gives detailed notices of the nationality, reli- 

 gion, and institutions of the Finnic nations of the Baltic. 

 See " Geschichte des Heidenthums sin nordlichen Europa," 

 col. i. 



