146 COSMOS. 



At the northeastern extremity of the Black Sea a wide field 

 was also opened to ethnology. Astonishment was felt at the 

 multiplicity of languages among the different races,* and the 

 necessity for skillful interpreters (the first aids and rough in- 

 struments in a comparative study of languages) was keenly 

 felt. The intercourse established by barter and trade was 

 carried from the Meeotic Gulf, then supposed to be of very 

 vast extent, over the Steppe where the central Kirghis horde 

 now pasture their flocks, through a chain of the Scythio-Sco- 

 lotic tribes of the Argippseans and Issedones,t whom I regard 

 as of Tndo-Germanic origin, to the Arimaspes on the northern 

 declivity of the Altai Mountains, who possessed large treasures 

 in gold.$ Here, therefore, we have the ancient realm of the 



* Cramer, De Studiis qucB veteres ad aliarum gentium co7itvlcrint Liu' 

 guas, 1844, p. 8 and 17. The ancient Colchians appear to have been 

 identical with the tribe of the Lazi (Lazi, gentes Colchorum, Pliu., vi., 

 4 ; the Aa^oL of Byzantine writers) ; see Vater (Professor in Kasan), 

 Der Argonautenzug mis den Quellen dargestellt, 1845, Heft, i., s. 24; 

 Heft, ii., s. 45, 57, und 103. In the Caucasus, the names Alani (Alane- 

 thi, for the land of the Alani), Ossi, and Ass may still be heard. Ac- 

 cording to the investigations begun with a truly philosophic and philo- 

 logical spirit by George Rosen in the Valleys of the Caucasus, the Ian 

 guage spoken by the Lazi possesses remains of the ancient Colchian 

 idiom. The Iberian and Grussic family of languages includes the La- 

 zian, Georgian, Suanian, and Mingrelian, all belonging to the group of 

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

 er affinity to the Gothic than to the Lithuanian. 



t On the relationship of the Scythians (Scolotes or Sacse), Alani, 

 Goths, Massagetee, and the Yueti of the Chinese historians, see Klaproth, 

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

 well as my Asie Centrale, t. i., f>. 400 ; t. ii., p. 252. Procopius him- 

 self says very definitely {De Belio Gothico, iv., 5, ed. Bonn, 1833, vol. 

 ii., p. 476), that the Goths were formerly called Scythians. Jacob 

 Grimm, in his i-ecently-published work, Ueher Jornandes, 1846, s. 21, 

 has shown the identity of the Getce and the Goths. The opinion of Nie- 

 buhr (see his Untersuchungen uber die Geten vnd Sartnaten, in his Kleine 

 Historische tind Philologische Schriften, Ite Sammlung, 1828, s. 362, 

 364, und 395), that the Scythians of Herodotus belong to the family of 

 the Mongolian tribes, appears the less probable, since these tribes, 

 partly under the yoke of the Chinese, and partly under that of the Ha- 

 kas or Kirghis (Xcp;^;iV of Menander), still lived, far in the east of Asia, 

 round Lake Baikal, in the beginning of the thirteenth century. He- 

 rodotus distinguishes also the bald-headed Argippajans (iv., 23) from the 

 Scythians ; and if the first-named are characterized as " flat-nosed," 

 they have, at the same time, a " long chin," which, according to my 

 experience, is by no means a physiognomical characteristic of tlie Cal 

 mucs, or of other Mongolian races, but leather of the blonde (German 

 izing?) Usun and Tingling, to whom the Chinese historians ascriba 

 ' long horse faces." 

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



