510 COSMOS. 



aids and rough instruments in a comparative study of 

 languages) was keenly felt. The intercourse established by 

 barter and trade was carried from the Meeotic Gulf, then sup- 

 posed to be of very vast extent, over the Steppe where the 

 central Kirghis horde now pasture their flocks, through a 

 chain of the Scythio-Scolotic tribes of the Argippeeans and 

 Issedones,*' whom I regard as of Indo-Germanic origin, to 

 the Arimaspes on the northern declivity of the Altai moun- 

 tains, \\ho possessed large treasures in gold.f Here, there- 

 fore, we have the ancient realm of the Griffins, the seat of 



been identical with the tribe of the Lazi (Lazi, gentes Colchorum, 

 Plin., vi. 4 ; the Aaoi of Byzantine writers) ; see Vater (Professor in 

 Kasan), Der Argonautenzug aus den Quellen dargestellt, 1845, Heft. i. 

 s. 24; Heft. ii. s. 45, 57, and 103. In the Caucasus, the names Alani 

 (Alanethi, for the land of the Alani), Ossi, and Ass, may still be heard. 

 According to the investigations begun with a truly philosophic and 

 philological spirit by George Eosen in the valleys of the Caucasus, the 

 language spoken by the Lazi possesses remains of the ancient Col chian 

 idiom. The Iberian and Grussic family of languages includes the 

 Lazian, Georgian, Suanian, and Mingrelian, all belonging to the group 

 of the Indo-Germanic languages. The language of the Osseti bears a 

 greater affinity to the Gothic than to the Lithuanian. 



* On the relationship of the Scythians (Scolotes or Sacae), Alani, Goths, 

 Massa-Getse, and the Yueti of the Chinese historians, see Klaproth, ia 

 .the commentary to the Voyage du Comte Potocki, t. i. p. 129, as well 

 as my Asie centrale, t. i. p. 400; t. ii. p. 252. Procopius himself says 

 very definitely (De Bello goihico, iv. 5, ed. Bonn, 1833, vol. ii. p. 476), 

 that the Goths were formerly called Scythians. Jacob Grimm, in iiifc, 

 recently published work, Ueber Jornandes, 1846, s. 21, has shown the 

 identity of the Getre and the Goths. The opinion of Niebuhr (see 

 his Untersuchungen uber die Oeten und Sarmaten, in his Kleine liisto- 

 risclie und philologische Schriften, Ite sammlung, 1828, s. 362, 364, and 

 395), that the Scythians of Herodotus belong to the family of the Mon- 

 golian tribes, appears the less probable, since these tribes, partly under the 

 yoke of the Chinese, and partly under that of the Hakas or Kirghis 

 (Xep^ic of Menander), still lived, far in the east of Asia, round Lake 

 Baikal, in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Herodotus distin- 

 guishes also the bald-headed Argippaeans (iv. 23), from the Scythians; and 

 if the first named are charactised as " fiat-nosed," they have, at the same 

 tune, a " long chin," which, according to my experience, is, by no means, 

 a physiognomical characteristic of the Calmucks, or of other Mongolian 

 races, but rather of the blonde (Germanising]) Usun and Tingling, 

 to whom the Chinese historians ascribe " long horse faces." 



t On the dwelling-place of the Arimaspes, and on the gold trade of 

 north-western Asia in the time of Herodotus, see my Asie centrale, t. i. 

 ,pp. 389-407. 



