182 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



Only three exceptions occur, where the course was a 

 return homewards from anterior progression. Such 

 was the Hebrew from Egypt to Palestine, the Ionian 

 from Greece to Asia Minor, and the Nogay Tahtar 

 from Russia to China. If the Egyptians, led by a 

 Sesostris, penetrated to Bactria, a fabulous Bacchus to 

 India, the Gauls to Greece and Galatia, and the Mace- 

 donians to the Punjab, beyond the Indus, they were 

 mere conquering inroads, which lasted only for a few 

 generations, sustained in some degree by the aboriginal 

 homogeneousness of the invaders with the races in pos- 

 session of the land. The pseudo-Greek kingdoms, not- 

 withstanding the great national influx of that people 

 in Western Asia, had no permanent tenure ; and the 

 Romans, the Crusaders, and the modern French, have 

 only produced military occupations, not national coloni- 

 zations. None are historically known to have departed 

 from the inter-Pontine Caucasus, though many came 

 westward, by the route of Armenia, with more or less 

 delay in that high region, because the avenues leading 

 south and west, from both sides of the Caspian, to Asia 

 Minor, Syria, and Africa, mainly pass through it. * 



Had the first population of mankind radiated from 

 the Ararat of Armenia (for the word is generical),t all 

 the present nations of the west, whose great movements 

 are historically traceable to the high Oxus and Jaxartes 



* Of course, the dispersion of the Jews eastward, and 

 some more recent forcible transpositions of western Cau- 

 casian tribes to high Asia, are not here regarded. 



t In the Circassian tongue Ararat, Arak, or Areck, 

 simply denote a peak. 



