504 THE HORSE. 



the people of Western Asia, who used the same engine of 

 war. The most simple and natural manner of reducing the 

 Horse to subjection, is by making him bear, the burden of his 

 rider ; and it may be assumed that this was the method of 

 domestication which preceded that of attaching him to an 

 armed equipage, the construction of which infers a certain 

 advancement in the useful arts. It cannot be believed 

 that the scattered tribes which peopled Europe during the 

 earlier periods of colonization, had themselves devised a me- 

 thod of using the Horse so little suited to their wants, and 

 to the countries of marsh, forest, and mountain, over which 

 they were spread. It is more consonant with reasonable pro- 

 bability to suppose, that the early settlers brought with them 

 the practice from the countries from which they were them- 

 selves derived. 



Of the pristine inhabitants of Europe, we know nothing 

 whatever ; but, with respect to its later inhabitants, the most 

 reasonable supposition is, that they were derived from Asia, 

 and that they had spread themselves, in the manner of colo- 

 nists, westward ; first, the Celtic and other allied people, 

 from the south of the line of the Caucasus ; and, secondly, at 

 unknown and posterior epochs, when population had extended 

 northward into the regions known generally and vaguely to 

 the ancients as Scythia and Sarmatia, the other settlers, who 

 gave origin to the Scandinavian, the modern German, and 

 other nations, commonly comprehended under the general 

 term Teutonic, or, less correctly, Gothic. These migrations 

 may be supposed to have followed one after another, slowly 

 westward, like wave succeeding wave ; and the latter settlers, 

 pressing upon the former ones, either dispossessed them, or 

 became mingled with them. But whatever be the particu- 

 lar history of these pristine movements, two races of men, 

 at least, were found, in the course of ages, inhabiting West- 

 ern Europe, distinguished from one another by speech, by 

 social habits, and religious observances ; the first of which 

 the Celtse may be considered as the type, and the latter 



