Chap. I. A N T I E N T M E T A P H Y S I C S. 37 



it, are the progenitors of the greateft part of the prefent inhabitants 

 of Europe. And, in later times ftill, firft under Gingeez-chan in 

 the 13th century, and then under Tamerlane in the 15th, they o- 

 ver-ran all Afia, broke into Europe, and came as far as the gates of 

 Vienna : And the lall mentioned of thefe conquerors eftablifhed a 

 great empire in India, which ftill fubfifts. And, lateft of all, as late 

 as this century or the end of the laft, being attacked by the Empe- 

 ror of China, at the head of an army of 300,000 men, they worfted 

 him in every encounter, armed, as they were of old, with bows, and 

 mounted on horfeback, and obliged him to retire, v/itli the lofs of a 

 confiderable part of his army ^. Thefe men, as I have fald, lived 

 not in houfes, (though antient Scythla was the coldeft country 

 known to the antients f , and the fame country, now known by the 

 name of Tartary, is at prefent the coldeft part of the Continents of 

 Europe and Afia), and had not even tents, as the prefent inhabitants 

 of thofe countries, the Tartars, have : For, if they had had them, 

 fo accurate an hiftorian as Herodotus, who appears himfelf to have 

 been in their country J, and to have been exceedingly w^ell in- 

 formed about all their cuftoms and manners, would have told us. He 

 does not fay that they were not cloathed ; and therefore I prefume 

 they were, but flightly and loofely, as the Patagonians, and the in- 

 habitants of Terra del Fuego are, which is ftill a feverer climate than 

 Scythia. And, in a feverer climate than either, being one degree 

 fouth of the Straits of Magellan, Sir Francis Drake found men alto- 

 gether 



* See Bell's Travels, p. 178. See alfo p. ig6. where he tells us that the Tartars 

 lament the condition of a man who is confined to a houfe, and to one place of abotle; 

 and it is a common maIedi£tion among them, to wifh that a man may be confined to 

 one place, and labour like a PiuOian. 



f See a dreadful account of their winter given by Herodotus, Lib. 4. cap. 2S, 



:: Lib. 4, cap. 81. 



