XI.] The Races of the Danube. 21 



o 



tell how it got there. It was a black-haired and 

 dark-skinned race, if we may judge from the 

 remnant of it which still preserves its primitive 

 language in the isolated corner of Spain between the 

 Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay, The second or 

 Aryan race seems to have been fair-haired and blue- 

 eyed, and it overran Europe in successive swarms, 

 coming from the highlands of Central Asia, where 

 divers tribes of Tatars have since taken its place. 

 The Aryans crowded the Iberians westward, and 

 everywhere overcame them (save in the corner of 

 Spain just mentioned), and intermingled with them, 

 forcing upon them their own speech and customs. 

 Thus the language of Europe to-day is Aryan, and 

 its legal and social structure is Aryan, but its popula- 

 tion is a mixture of Aryan and Iberian. In the 

 extremities of Europe as looked at from Asia — in 

 the three southern peninsulas, in Gaul, and in Western 

 and Northern Britain — the dark aboriginal type pre- 

 dominates ; while in Scandinavia, Northern Germany, 

 and Northern Russia, the blonde type of the invaders 

 remains in the ascendant. It is owing to this mix- 

 ture of strongly contrasted races that the peoples 

 of Europe present such marked varieties of com- 

 plexion. 



So much, at least, is probable, though more or 



