14 DIFFERENT GRADATIONS OF 



often erupting ignited scoriae, jets of carbonic acid gas and 

 sulphuretted hydrogen, and hot steam. The contemplation of 

 this grand and imposing spectacle appears to have produced 

 on the minds of the earlier inhabitants of those countries 

 only vague feelings of astonishment and awe. It might 

 have been imagined, that, as we have before said, the well- 

 marked periodic return of the same phenomena, and the 

 uniform manner in which they group themselves in ascending 

 zones, would have rendered easier a knowledge of the laws of 

 nature; but so far as history and tradition enable us to 

 trace, we do not find that the advantages possessed by those 

 favoured regions have been so improved. Recent researches 

 have rendered it very doubtful whether the primitive seat of 

 Hindoo civilisation, one of the most wonderful phases of the 

 rapid progress of mankind, were really within the tropics. 

 Airy ana Vaedjo, the ancient cradle of the Zend, was to the 

 north-west of the Upper Indus ; and after the separation of 

 the Iraunians from the Brahminical institution, it was in a 

 country bounded by the Himalaya and the small Yindhya 

 chain, that the language which had previously been common 

 to the Iraunians and Hindoos, assumed among the latter 

 (together with manners, customs, and the social state), an 

 individual form in the Magadha, or Madliya Desa ( 7 ). The 

 extension of the Sanscrit language and civilisation to its 

 south-easternmost limit, far within the torrid zone, has 

 been described by my brother, Wilhelin von Humboldt, in 

 his great work on the Kawi, and other languages of kindred 

 structure ( 8 ). 



Notwithstanding the greater difficulties with which in 

 more northern climates, the discovery of general laws was 

 surrounded, by the excessive complication of phenomena, aad 



