292 NATURAL BIbTOEl OS 



a noble effort to retain their nationality, suddenly departed, in 

 the last century, and, retracing the Btepa of their ano 

 moved eastward in a vast column, fighting their way through 

 all opposition, till they reached the Chinese frontier in s 

 The western direction of the Hyperborean conquest- 

 more particularly marked in the reign of Genghiz Khan, in 

 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; of Timur Leng, in the 

 fourteenth ; and Nadir Shah, in the seventeenth; during which 

 period, or, rather, from the time of Boleslas the Chaste (1227), 

 to that of Stanislaus Augustus, a Polish writer enumerates, 

 with some exaggeration, not less than ninety-one invasions of 

 Poland coming from the east. Strange, however, as it may 

 appear, none of the foregoing conquerors were themselves 

 pure Mongols, but by connection they all possessed a portion of 

 Caucasian blood, through Finnic, Yuchi, or Turkish alliances. 

 On the north side of the great wall of China, the terms 

 Kuthais and Kara Kuthais are not clearly designated ; they 

 may apply generally to the Mongolic residents, though it is 

 evident that the last mentioned refers to a dark race, perhaps 

 the swarthy Kalmucks. It was from this region that Genghiz 

 Khan and his clan first commenced their conquests, which, in 

 Octai's reign, were divided into several dominions.* It is, 



* These conquerors all sprung, directly or indirectly, from the Xiron 

 Cayut, chief family of the Niron tribe of iron miners, smelters, and forg- 

 ing smiths, or Arkenikom, residing in the sacred district of Kobdo, north- 

 east of Irmingtan Peak, part of Altain Niro, situated on the edge of the 

 Shamoo, or Gobi desert, and not far west from Karakorum, once the 

 capital of Genghiz Khan. From this point the waters flow, by the river 

 Selinga, into Lake Baikal, and thence, finally, by the Yenisei, into the 

 Polar Sea. It was here Pisouka Bahauder, eighth in descent from a child 

 of light (Xourayon), laid the foundation of the empire which Genghiz 

 formed. But it must be remarked that the ancestral names of the family 

 do not indicate so much a 3Iongolic as a Caucasian Finnic origin. Proba- 

 bly the mining mountaineers were still of the Yuchi stock, and, as usual 

 elsewhere, soon became the master tribe over the invaders. In these 

 mountains are probably ae oldest mines in the world. Here the Pipili- 

 cas (gold-finding ants), < Hindoo lore, may have been Hyperborean Fins 



