ETHNOGRAPHICAL DETAILS. 70 



banks of the Volga, then in Pamionia, and finally on the banks of 

 the Marne, and 011 those of the Po, ravaging the beautiful fields 

 where, from the days of Antenor, the genius of man had accumulated 

 its glorious monuments. Thus from the Mongolian deserts blew a 

 pestiferous wind, which choked even in the Cisalpine plains the deli- 

 cate blossom of art, the object of such tender and continual cares. 



Our English traveller, Atkinson, has called the Steppes " the 

 cradle of invasions;" and this not only because from their solitudes 

 issued the hordes which devastated Europe in the first centuries of 

 the Middle Ages, but because Kussia and Austria have found therein 

 those truculent soldiers of repulsive aspect who, in their hands, have 

 become, even in our own day, the scourge of the free and civilized 

 nations they would fain have subjugated. 



In the present day the Steppes of Eastern Europe and of Asia are 

 still the asylum of savagery, if not of barbarism. The tribes scat- 

 tered over them are more or less closely allied to that fraction of the 

 human family which ethnographists designate under the name of the 

 " Turanian." Those of the East belong exclusively to the Mongolian 

 branch, and those of the West partly to the Mongolian and partly to 

 the Turkish, more or less modified by their mixture with the Slave 

 branch of the great Caucasian family. To all these peoples we 

 commonly apply the term Tartaro, or Tartars, which originally " was 

 a name of the Mongolic races, but through their political ascendancy 

 in Asia after Chingis-Khan (A.D. 1227), it became usual to call all 

 the tribes which were under Mongolian sway by the name of 

 Tartar." * It now really belongs to the small tribe of Turkic origin 

 which, after occupying Turkistan, has spread even into the Crimea. 

 We must distinguish from it, however, the Cossacks, or Kosaks, who 

 inhabit the Ukraine, the banks of the Don and the Dnieper, and who 

 are more closely related to the Slave family than the Mongolian race. 



We shall pass in rapid review the principal hordes which inhabit 

 the Steppes, from the western border to the eastern extremity of 

 these deserts. 



* Prof. Max Miiller, ' Lectures on the Science of Language," 2nd Series, p. 309. 



