PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 21 



Alexander the Great, who did not extend his conquests beyond the 

 Punjaub, heard of powerful monarchs, one of whom ruled over a 

 great kingdom on the Ganges, and could send into the field two 

 thousand war chariots, and four thousand armed elephants. That 

 the lazy Brahmins were in India, in the time of Alexander and 

 Seleucus is noticed by Megasthenes ; he tells us that they exercised 

 priestly functions and walked about in nude dignity, free from all 

 obligations and living on the fat of the land. There are six other 

 Hittite kingdoms mentioned in the inscriptions. A Hittite tribe, 

 Rabakita, were driven out of India about 63 B.C., taking refuge in 

 Thibet and Tartary. In the beginning of the fifth century they 

 reached Siberia, at the head waters of the Yenesei, where a 

 miserable remnant of the race still dwell. 



The region about the Yenesei is one of mounds like European 

 Scythia. The Khitan dead were buried there, and from their 

 tombs objects of art attest an ancient and peculiar civilisation. 

 On the rocks by the riverside are inscriptions, the authors of which 

 were the Raba Kita. The Northern Hittites migrated to America 

 at the beginning of the sixth century ; there seems to be evidence 

 that the southern or Oceanic Hittites came to Guatamala and 

 Yucatan at an earlier period. The passage from Kamtschatka to 

 America was by the Aleutian chain, ending at Alaska. The great 

 cause of emigration was the presence of hostile tribes, which began 

 with the expulsion of anti-Buddhist tribes from India before the 

 Christian era, but of which the tide did not reach the northern 

 coasts until the beginning of the sixth century. Stories of revolt 

 occur frequently in the ancient annals of Japan, and are generally 

 accompanied by stories of expatriation, which could only take place 

 by sea. The wearied Hittite would seek a far-off home where he 

 might dwell at liberty and in peace. At a recent meeting of the 

 Academy of Sciences, Paris, M. Emile Blanchard read a paper on 

 the existence of a terrestrial connection between Europe and 

 America during the present geological age. He pointed out that a 

 line from the north of Scotland through the Orkneys, the Faroe 

 Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador by way of Davis Straits, 



