PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 511 



.the meteorological myth of the Hyperboreans,* which has 

 wandered with Hercules far to the west. 



We may conjecture that the portion of Northern Asia above 

 alluded to, which has again, in our days, become celebrated 

 by the Siberian gold washings, as well as the large quantity of 

 gold accumulated, in the time of Herodotus, by the gothic 

 tribe of the Massagetso, must have become an important 

 source of wealth and luxury to the Greeks, by means of the 

 intercourse opened with the Euxine. I place the locality of 

 this source of wealth between the 53rd and 55th degrees of 

 latitude. The region of the gold-sand, of which the travellers 

 were informed by the Daradas (Darder or Derder), mentioned 

 in the Mahabharata, and in the fragments collected by Megas- 

 thenes, and which, owing to the accidental double meaning of 

 the names of some animals,f has been associated with the often- 



* " The story of the Hyperboreans is a meteorological myth. The wind 

 1 the mountains (B'Oreas) is believed to issue from the Rhipean moun- 

 lins, while beyond these mountains there prevail a calm air, and a 

 genial climate, as on the Alpine summits, beyond the region of clouds. 

 In this we trace the dawn of a physical science, which explains the dis- 

 tribution of heat and the difference of climates by local causes, by the 

 direction of predominating winds, the vicinity of the sun, and the action 

 of a saline or humid principle. The consequence of these systematic 

 ideas was the assumption of a certain independence supposed to exist 

 between the climate and the latitude of the place; thus the myth of the 

 Hyperboreans, connected by its origin with the Dorian worship of 

 Apollo, which was primitively Boreal, may have proceeded from the 

 north towards the west thus following Hercules in his progress towards the 

 sources of the Ister, to the island of Erythia, and to the gardens of the 

 Hesperides. The Rhipes, or Rhipean mountains, have also a meteoro- 

 logical meaning, as the word indicates. They are the mountains of im- 

 pulsion, or of the glacial souffle (PITT//), the place from which the Boreal 

 tempests are unloosened." Asie centrcde, t. i. pp. 392, 403. 



*f- In Hindostanee there are two words which might easily be con- 

 founded, as Wilford has already remarked, one of which is tschiuntd, 

 a kind of large black ant (whence the diminutive tscliiunti, tschinti, 

 the small common ant); the other tschitd, a spotted panther, the 

 little hunting leopard (the Felis jubata, Schreb.) This word (tschitd) 

 is the Sanscrit tschitra, variegated or spotted, as is shown by the 

 Bengalee name for the animal (tscJiitdbdgli and tschitibdgh, from bdgli, 

 Sanscrit wyaglira, tiger). (Buschmann.) In the Mahabharata (ii. 

 1860), there is a passage recently discovered in which the ant-gold 

 is mentioned. " Wilso invenit (Journ. of the Asiat. Soc., vii. 1843, p. 

 143), mentionem fieri etiam in Indicis litteris bestiarum aurum effodi- 

 eutium, quas, quum terrain effodiant, eodem nomine (pipiiica) atque 



