102 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



celebrated work have been subjected to a learned and strict 

 examination by Klaproth. According to the result of this 

 research the Hiongnu belong to the widely diffused Turkish 

 races of the Altai and Tangnu Mountains. The name 

 Hiongnu, even in the third century before the Christian era, 

 was a general name for the Ti, Thu-kiu or Turks, in the 

 north and north-west of China. The southern Hiongnu over- 

 came the Chinese, and in conjunction with them destroyed 

 the empire of the northern Hiongnu. These latter fled to 

 the west, and this flight seems to have given the first 

 impulse to the migration of nations in Middle Asia. The 

 Huns, who were long confounded with the Hiongnu, (as the 

 Uigures with the Ugures and the Hungarians), belonged, ac- 

 cording to Klaproth, to the Finnish race of the Ural moun- 

 tains between Europe and Asia, a race which was variously 

 mingled with Germans, Turks, and Samoieds. (Klaproth, Asia 

 Polyglotta, p. 183 and 211; Tableaux Historiques de FAsie, 

 p. 1 2 and 1 9 .) The Huns (OS woe) are first named by Dio- 

 nysius Perigetes, a writer who was able to obtain more accu- 

 rate information respecting the interior of Asia, because, as a 

 learned man born at Charax on the Arabian Gulf, Augustus 

 had sent him back to the East to accompany thither his 

 adopted son Caius Agrippa. Ptolemy, a century later, 

 writes the word (Xovvot) with a strong aspiration, which, as 

 St. Martin observes, is found again in the geographical 

 name of Chunigard. 



" 



(12) p . 7._ tf carved Stone. 

 On the banks of the Orinoco near Caicara where the 



