﻿II. 



THE FIFTH 

 ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE, 



DELIVERED 21 FEBRUARY, 1788, 



BY THE PRESIDENT. 



AT the close of my last address to you, Gentlemen, 

 I declared my design of introducing to your no- 

 tice a people of Asia, who seemed as different in moft 

 respects from the Hindus and Arabs as those two na- 

 tions had been shown to differ from each other ; I 

 mean the people whom we call Tartars : but I en- 

 ter with extreme diffidence on my present subject, be- 

 cause I have little knowledge of the Tartarean dia- 

 lects ; and the gross errors of European writers on 

 Asiatic literature, have long convinced me that no sa- 

 tisfactory account can be given of any nation with 

 whose language we are not perfectly acquainted. Such 

 evidence, however, as I have procured by attentive 

 reading and scrupulous enquiries, I will now lay be- 

 fore you ; interspersing such remarks as I could not 

 but make on that evidence, and submitting the whole 

 to your impartial decision. 



Conformably to the method before adopted in de- 

 scribing Arabia and India, I consider Tartary also, 

 for the purpose of this discourse, on its most extensive 

 scale ; and request your attention whilst I trace the 

 largest boundaries that are assignable to it. Conceive 

 aline drawn from the mouth of the Oby to that of the 



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