PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 14? 



Griffins, the seat of the meteorological myth of the Hyperbo- 

 reans,* which has wandered with Hercules far to the West. 

 We may conjecture that the portion of Northern Asia above 

 alluded to, which has again, in our days, become celebrated 

 by the Siberian gold washings, as well as the large quantity 

 of gold accumulated, in the time of Herodotus, by the Gothic 

 tribe of the Massagetse, must have become an important source 

 of wealth and luxury to the Greeks, by means of the inter- 

 course opened with the Euxine. I place the locality of this 

 source of wealth between the 53d and 55th degrees of latitude. 

 The region of the gold-sand, of which the travelers were in- 

 formed by the Daradas (Darder or Derder), mentioned in the 

 Mahabharata, and in the fragments collected by Megasthenes 

 and which, owing to the accidental double meanmg of the 

 names of some animals,! has been associated with the often- 

 Northwestern Asia in the time of Herodotus, see my Asie Centrale, t. 

 i., p. 389-407. 



* " The story of the Hyperboreans is a meteorological myth. The 

 wind of the mountains (B'Oreas) is believed to issue trom the Rhipean 

 Mountains, while beyond these mountains there prevail a calm air and 

 a genial climate, as on the Alpine summits, beyond the region of clouds. 

 In this we trace the dawn of a physical science, which explains the 

 distribution of heat and the difference of climates by local causes, by 

 the direction of predominating winds, the vicinity of the sun, and the 

 action of a saline or humid principle. The consequence of these sys- 

 tematic ideas was the assumption of a certain independence supposed 

 to exist between the climate and the latitude of the place ; thus the 

 mythf of the Hyperboreans, connected by its oi-igin with the Dorian 

 worship of Apollo, which was primitively Boreal, may have proceeded 

 from the north toward the west, thus following Hercules in his prog- 

 ress toward the sources of the Ister, to the island of Erythia, and to 

 the gardens of the Hesperides. The Rhipes, or Rhipean Mountains, 

 have also a meteorological meaning, as the word indicates. They are 

 the mountains of impulsion, or of the glacial souffle {^itttj), the place 

 from which the Boreal tempests are unloosened." — Asie Centrale, t. i., 

 p. 392, 403. 



t In Hindostanee there are two words which might easily be con- 

 founded, as Wilford has already remarked, one of which is tschiuntd, 

 a kind of large black ant (whence the diminutive tschiunti, tschinti, the 

 small common ant) ; the other ttchitd, a spotted panther, the little hunt- 

 ing leopard (the Felis jubata, Schreb.). This word (tschitd) is the 

 Sanscrit tschiira, variegated or spotted, as is shown by the Bengalee 

 name for the animal {tschitdbdgh and tschitibdgh, from bdgh, Sanscrit 

 wyaghra, tiger). — (Buschmann.) In the Mahabharata (ii., I860) there 

 is a passage recently discovered, in which the ant-gold is mentioned. 

 *' Wilso invenit {Journ. of the Asiat. Soc, vii., 1843, p. 143), mention- 

 em fieri etiam in Indicis litteris bestiarum aurum effodientium, quas, 

 quum terram eftbdiant, eodem nomine (pipilica) atque formicas Indi 

 nuncupant." Compare Schwanbeck, in Megasth. Indicis, 1846, p. 73. 

 It struck me to see that, in the basaltic districts of the Alexican high* 



