OF THE UNIVERSE. CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER. 161 



of historical events than of a long continuance of cli- 

 matic influences, when the types have been once firmly 

 established,) and the apparent contradiction between colour 

 and situation, must have awakened the liveliest interest in 

 thoughtful observers. We still find in the interior of India 

 an extensive territory peopled by very dark coloured, almost 

 black, aboriginal inhabitants, quite distinct from the lighter 

 coloured and later-immigrating Arian races. To these belong 

 among the "Vindhya nations, the Gondas, the Bhillas (Bheels) 

 in the forest-covered mountains of Malwa and Guzerat, and 

 the Kolas of Orissa. The acute Lassen considers it pro- 

 bable that in the time of Herodotus, the black Asiatic race, 

 the "Ethiopians of the sun-rising/' resembling the 

 Lybian Ethiopians in the colour of the skin but not in the 

 quality of the hair, extended much farther towards the 

 north-west than at present ( 244 ). Thus also in the ancient 

 Egyptian kingdom, the habitations of the true woolly-haired, 

 often-conquered Negro races extended far into northern 

 Nubia (245). 



The enlargement of the sphere of ideas, which arose from 

 the aspect of many new physical phsenomena, as well as from 

 contact with different races of men and with their civili- 

 sation and the contrasts winch it presented, was unfortu- 

 nately not accompanied by the fruits of an ethnological 

 comparison of languages, either philosophical, regard- 

 ing the fundamental relations of ideas ( 246 ), or simply 

 historical. What we call classical antiquity was wholly 

 a stranger to this class of investigations. On the other 

 hand, the expeditions of Alexander offered to the Greeks 

 scientific materials taken from the long accumulated 

 treasures of more anciently cultivated nations. What I 



