2 f J4 NATURAL HISTORY OE 



of so many ages at length appear to have hlunted the restless 

 characters of the Mongolic stock, and their habits became 

 stationary. Pastoral nations, though often conquerors, ever 

 finish by receding before the steady progress of energetic culti- 

 vators. It is exemplified, in this case, by the gradual reaction 

 which sends the Caucasian eastward, to recover the debatable 

 ground. After 1800 years of conflict, he has already regained 

 a great portion of the original seat of the Hyperborean type. 



Russia has subdued several nations who have little or no 

 history; among others, some of real Mongolic descent, and the 

 Sogha, or Yakutsk, of all men the most hardy, together with 

 the lofty Tschutski, of pretended American origin, but neither 

 appearing to be true Mongols. An important consideration 

 affects the condition of these arctic nations of Asia, namely, 

 the fast decrease of the Reindeer, both domestic and wild, 

 threatening, at no distant period, to reduce the already miserable 

 existence of the people to starvation, where no migration 

 towards the south can offer to improve their lot. The cause 

 of this privation of almost the only source of comfort, in those 

 dreary regions, is not yet fully explained, although several 

 tribes are already totally destitute of their domestic flocks. It 

 may be here, as in North America, that some law in nature is 

 operating, in combination with the progress of civilized nations, 

 to change the character of the high north, and leave it a desert, 

 with scarcely a human tribe able to subsist on it; indeed, the 

 only people must, ultimately, be Samoyed, Esquimaux, and 

 Lapland fish-eating Hyperboreans ; the sole remaining race of 

 the beardless stock to which we have space to refer. 



This people, in both continents, being ever greatly restricted 

 in food, either at no time acquired the full stature of the type, 

 or it still retains the original appearance, from which the 

 nations in better circumstances have passed to more ample 

 structures. Though diminutive, they possess all the character- 

 istics of the Mongolic form, so far as they remain unmixed ; 

 but in several instances they have formed unions with the 



