554 COSMOS. 



Thus there arose connections between the shores of the Dead 

 Sea, the Schensi, and those territories on the Oxus, in which 

 an animated trade had been prosecuted from an early age 

 with the nations inhabiting the coasts of the Black Sea. 



The direction in which the stream of immigration inclined 

 in Asia was from east to west, whilst in the New Continent it 

 was from north to south. A century and a half before our 

 era, about the time of the destruction of Corinth and Carthage* 

 the first impulse to that " immigration of nations," which did 

 not, however, reach the borders of Europe until five hundred 

 years afterwards, was given, by the attack of the Hiungnu (a 

 Turkish race confounded by De Guignes and Johann Muller 

 with the Finnish Hunns) on the fair-haired and blue-eyed Yueti 

 (Geta3 ?), probably of Indo-Germanic descent,* and on the Usun, 

 who dwelt near the wall of China. In this manner the stream 

 of population flowed from the upper river valleys of the 

 Hoang-ho westward to the Don and the Danube, and the 

 opposite tendencies of these currents, which at first brought 

 the different races into antagonist conflict in the northern 

 parts of the Old Continent, ended in establishing friendly 

 relations of peace and commerce. It is when considered 

 from this point of view, that great currents of migration, 

 advancing like oceanic currents between masses which are 

 themselves unmoved, become objects of cosmical importance. 



In the reign of the Emperor Claudius the embassy of 

 Rachias of Ceylon came to Rome by way of Egypt. Under 

 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (named An-tun, by the writers 

 of the history of the dynasty of Han), Roman legates visited 

 the Chinese court, having come by sea by the route of Tunkin. 

 We here observe the earliest traces of the extended inter- 



* To this fair-haired, blue-eyed Indo-Germanic, Gothic, or Arian 

 race of Eastern Asia, belong the Usun, Tingling, Hutis, and great Yueti. 

 The last are called by the Chinese writers a Thibetian nomadic race, 

 who, three hundred years before our era, migrated to the district between 

 the upper course of the Huang-hoand the snowy mountains of Nanschan. 

 I here recal this descent, as the Seres (Plin., vi. 22) are also described as 

 " rutilis comis et caeruleis oculis," (compare Ukert, Geogr. der Oriech. 

 und Romer, th. iii. abth. 2. 1845, a. 275). We are indebted foi the know- 

 ledge of these fair-haired races (who, in the most eastern part of Asia, 

 gave the first impulse to what has been called " the great migration of 

 nations"), to the researches of Abel Remusat and Klaproth, which belong 

 to the most brilliant historica. discoveries of our age. 



