1JOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 43 



any old authentic legends, and being all very 

 uninformed, save in what concerns their immediate 

 wants and habitual ideas, it is exceedingly difficult 

 to learn anything of this sort from them directly; 

 their creed especially is a subject of insuperable 

 difficulty, through the sole medium of direct 

 questioning; their customs, again, are apt to afford 

 but negative evidence, because, being drawn from 

 nature, they tend to identity in all the several 

 nations; and lastly, their physical aspect is of 

 that osculent and vague stamp, that what it does 

 prove is general, not particular. 



The great Scythic stem of the human race is 

 divided into three primary branches, or the 

 Tungus, the Mongol, and the Turk. The first 

 investigators of this subject urgently insisted on 

 the radical diversity of these three races ; but 

 the most recent inquirers incline more to unitise 

 them. Certainly there is a strong and obvious 

 character of physical (if not also of lingual) 

 sameness throughout the Scythic race ; and it is 

 remarkable that this peculiar character belongs 

 also to all the aborigines of India, who may be 

 at once known, from the Cavery and Vigaru to 

 the Casi and Bhagarati, alpine feeder of the 

 Ganges, not its Bengal defluent, by their quasi- 

 Scythic physiognomy, so decidedly opposed to the 

 Caucasian countenance of the Arians of India, or 



