216 THE RACES OF THE DANUBE. [xi. 



and until the fifth century after Christ, the Teutonic 

 family appears far to the eastward of its present 

 position. In the time of Herodotos, and down to 

 the age of Constantine, the inhabitants of Thrace 

 now the centre of European Turkey were blue- 

 eyed Goths, called Getae by the classic historians. 

 Pretty much the whole of Turkey and Southern 

 Russia were German in those days ; and, as Donald- 

 son conjectured, it is every way probable that the 

 people known to the ancients as Skythians were no 

 other than Goths. 



Thus, as if to illustrate how completely all Aryan 

 Europe is made up out of the same race-elements, 

 we find that the lower Danube, for at least a 

 thousand years, was German territory ; and, except 

 on the very improbable supposition that its old 

 population has been entirely exterminated or trans- 

 ferred westward, we have every reason to believe 

 that there is much German blood there at the 

 present day. 



While this region was still in the hands of the 

 Germans, at the beginning of the second century 

 after Christ, the legions of the emperor Trajan 

 passed beyond the Danube, and, conquering the 

 country then known as Dacia, formed a permanent 

 settlement there. In 271 the emperor Aurelian, 



