146 COSMOS. 



At the northeastern extremity of the Black Sea a wile field 

 was also opened to ethnology. Astonishment was felt at the 

 multiplicity of languages among the different races,* and the 

 necessity for skillful interpreters (the first aids and rough in- 

 struments in a comparative study of languages) was keenly 

 felt. The intercourse established by barter and trade was 

 carried from the Mceotic Gulf, then supposed to be of very 

 vast extent, over the Steppe where the central Kirghis horde 

 now pasture their flocks, through a chain of the Scythio-Sco- 

 lotic tribes of the Argippaeans and Issedones,t whom I regard 

 as of Tndo-Germanic origin, to the Arimaspes on the northern 

 declivity of the Altai Mountains, who possessed large treasures 

 in gold4 Here, therefore, Ave have the ancient realm of the 



* Cramer, De Studiis qucB veteres ad aliarum gentium contvlerint Lin* 

 ffuas, 1844, p. 8 and 17. The ancient Colchians appear to have been 

 identical with the tribe of the Lazi (Lazi, gentes Colchorum, Plin., vi., 

 i ; the Aai^oi of Byzantine writers) ; see Vater (Professor in Kasan), 

 Der Argonautenzug aus den Quellen dargestellt, 1845, Heft. !., s. 24; 

 Heft, ii., s. 45, 57, und 103. In the Caucasus, the names Alaui (Alane- 

 thi, for the land of the Alani), Ossi, and Ass may still be heard. Ac- 

 cording to the investigations be^un with a truly philosophic and philo- 

 logical spirit by George Rosen in the Valleys of the Caucasus, the Ian 

 guage spoken by the Lazi possesses remains of the ancient Colchian 

 idiom. The Iberian and Grussic family of languages includes the La- 

 ziaa, Georgian, Suanian, and Mingrelian, all belonging to the group of 

 the Indo-Germanic languages. The language of the Osseti bears a great- 

 or affinity to the Gothic than to the Lithuanian. 



t On the relationship of the Scythians (Scolotes or Sacae), Alani, 

 Goths, Massagetffi, and the Yueti of the Chinese historians, see Klaproth, 

 in the commentary to the Voyage du Comte Potocki, t. i., p. 129, as 

 well as my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 400 ; t. ii., p. 252. Procopius him- 

 self says very definitely (Z?e Bello Goihico, iv., 5, ed. Bonn, 1833, vol. 

 ii., p. 476), that the Goths were formerly called Scythians. Jacob 

 Grimm, in his recently -published work, Ueber Jornandes, 1846, s. 21, 

 has shown the identity of the Getae and the Goths. The opinion of Nie- 

 buhr (see his Untersuchungen uher die Geten und Sarmaten, in his Kleine 

 Historische und Philologische Schriflen, Ite Sammlung, 1828, s. 362, 

 364, und 395), that the Scythians of Herodotus belong to the family of 

 the Mongolian tribes, appears the less probable, since these tribes, 

 partly under the yoke of the Chinese, and partly under that of the Ha- 

 kas or Kirghis {XEpxig of Menander), still lived, far in the east of Asia, 

 round Lake Baikal, in the beginning of the thirteenth century. He- 

 rodotus distinguishes also the bald-headed Argippaeans (iv., 23) from the 

 Scythians ; and if the first-named are characterized as " flat-nosed," 

 they have, at the same time, a " long chin," which, according to' my 

 jxperience, is by no means a physiognomical characteristic of the Cal 

 mucs, or of other Mongolian races, but rather of the blonde (German 

 izing?) Usun and Tingling, to whom the Chinese historians ascribe 

 ' long horse faces." 



X On the dwelling-place of the Arimaspes, and on the gold trad^ d 



