186 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION 



nections between the coasts of the Pacific, the Shensi, and the 

 region around the Oxus, in which there had been, from very 

 early times, an animated traffic with the neighbourhood of the 

 Black Sea. 



The direction in which the great tide of population flowed 

 in Asia was from east to west, as in the New Continent 

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

 near the time of the destruction of Corinth and of Carthage, 

 the attacks of the Hiungnu (a Turkish tribe confounded by 

 De Guignes and Johannes Muller with the Finnish Pluns) on 

 the fair-haired and blue-eyed, probably Indo-Germaiiic, race 

 of the ( 28 *) Yueti (Getse?) and Usun, near the Chinese wall, 

 gave the first impulse to that ' ' migration of nations" which 

 did not reach the borders of Europe until five centuries 

 later. Thus the wave of population flowed (or was propa- 

 gated) from the upper valley of the Hoangho to the Don 

 and the Danube ; and in the northern part of the Old Con- 

 tinent, movements advancing in different directions brought 

 one part of mankind first into hostile collision, and 

 subsequently into peaceful and commercial contact with 

 another. Thus we may regard great currents of popula- 

 tion, moving forward like the currents of the ocean 

 between unmoved masses at rest, as facts of cosmical im- 

 portance. 



Under the reign of the Emperor Claudius, the embassy 

 of Eachias came from Ceylon, through Egypt, to Borne. 

 Under Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (called by the historians 

 of the dynasty of the Han, Antun), Roman legates appeared 

 at the Chinese court, having come by water by Tunkin. I 

 here point out the first traces of an extended intercourse 

 between the Eoman Empire and China and India for this 

 reason among others, that it is liighly probable that through 



