512 COSMOS 



repeated fable of the gigantic ants, is situated within a more 

 southern latitude of 35 or 37. This region must, according to 

 one of two combinations, be situated either in the Thibetian 

 highlands, east of the Bolor chain, between the Himalaya and 

 Kouen-Lun, west of Iskardo ; or north of the latter mountain- 

 chain towards the desert of Gobi, which has likewise been 

 described as an auriferous district by the accurate Chinese 

 observer and traveller Hiuen-thsang, who lived at the begin- 

 ning of the seventh century of our era. How much more 

 accessible must the gold of the Armiaspes and Massagaetse 

 have been to the traders in the Milesian colonies on the 

 northern shores of the Euxine! I have alluded to these 

 sources of wealth for the purpose of not omitting to mention 

 a fact which may be regarded as an important and still active 

 result of the opening of the Euxine, and of the first advance 

 of the Greeks towards the East. 



The great event of the Doric migrations, and of the return 

 of the HeraclidaB into Peloponnesus, which was productive 

 of such important changes, falls about one hundred and fifty 

 years after the demi -mythical expedition of the Argonauts, 

 which is synonymous with the opening of the Euxine to 

 Greek navigation and commercial intercourse. This naviga- 

 tion simultaneously gave occasion to the founding of new 

 states and new governments, and to the establishment of a 

 colonial system designating an important period in the life of 

 the Hellenic races, and it has further been most influential in 

 extending the sphere of cosmical views, based upon intellec- 

 tual culture. Europe and Asia thus owed their more intimate 

 connection to the establishment of the colonies, which formed 

 a continuous chain from Sinope (Dioscurias) and the Tauric 

 Panticapa3um to Saguntum and Cyrene, the latter of which 

 was founded by the inhabitants of the rainless island of Thera. 



No nation of antiquity possessed more numerous and, on the 

 whole, more powerful colonial cities than the Greeks. It 

 must, however, be remembered, that a period of four hundred 

 or five hundred years intervened between the establishment 

 of the most ancient ^Eolian colonies, amongst which Mytilene 



ibrmieas Indi nuncupant." Compare Schwanbeck, in Megastli. Indicw, 

 1846, p. 73. It struck me to see that, in the basaltic districts of the 

 Mexican highlands, the ants bring together heaps of shining grains of 

 hyalite, which I was able to collect out of their hillocks. 



