THE ARABS. 571 



and the introduction of a new and foreign element of civilisa- 

 tion, by means of the first direct contact of our continent 

 with the land of the tropics, it appears desirable that we 

 should throw a general glance over the path on which we are 

 about to enter. 



The Arabs, a people of Semitic origin, partially dispelled 

 the barbarism which had shrouded Europe for upwards of 

 two hundred years after the storms by which it had been 

 shaken, from the aggressions of hostile nations. The Arabs 

 lead us back to the imperishable sources of Greek philoso- 

 phy; and besides the influence thus exercised on scientific 

 cultivation, they have also extended and opened new paths in 

 the domain of natural investigation. In our continent these 

 disturbing storms began under Valentinian L, when the Huns 

 (of Finnish, not Mongolian origin) penetrated beyond the Don 

 in the closing part of the fourth century, and subdued, first 

 the Alani, and subsequently, with their aid, the Ostrogoths. In 

 the remote parts of Eastern Asia, the stream of migratory 

 nations had already been moved in its onward course for 

 several centuries before our era. The first impulse was 

 given, as we have already remarked, by the attack of the 

 Hiungnu, a Turkish race, on the fair-haired and blue-eyed 

 Usuni, probably of Indo-Germanic origin, who bordered on 

 the Yueti (Geti), and dwelt in the upper river valley of the 

 Hoangho, in the north-west of China. The devastating 

 stream of migration directed from the great wall of China, 

 which was erected as a protection against the inroads of the 

 Hiungnu (214 B. c.), flowed on through Central Asia, north 

 of the chain of the Celestial mountains. These Asiatic hordes 

 were uninfluenced by any religious zeal before they entered 

 Europe, and some writers have even attempted to show that 

 the Moguls were not as yet Buddhists when they advanced 

 victoriously to Poland and Silesia.* Wholly different rela- 



* If, as has often been asserted, Charles Martel, by his victory at 

 Tours, protected Central Europe against the Mussulman invasion, it 

 cannot be maintained, with equal justice, that the retreat of the Moguls 

 after the battle of Liegnitz prevented Buddhism from penetrating to the 

 shores of the Elbe and the Rhine. The Mongolian battle, which was 

 fought in the plain of "Wahlstatt, near Liegnitz, and in which Duke 

 Henry the Pious fell fighting bravely, took place on the 9th of April,1241, 

 four years after Kaptschak (Kamtschatka), and Russia became subject to 



