THE HUMAN SPECIES. 297 



subsequently into t e celebrated swords of the ancient north. 

 Horns of the Elk, and antlers of Reindeer, made ready shovels 

 and pickaxes ; and having already a knowledge of meteoric 

 metal, they soon found, that by digging, ores might be brought 

 up from beneath the surface.* 



The zone of earth given them as a patrimony being inter- 

 sected at right angles by many enormous rivers — by the Ice- 

 land or German Sea — by the White Sea — by the still re- 

 maining portions of the Asiatic Mediterranean — by Behring's 

 Straits — and unceasing winters causing many sufferings to 

 migrators on the east and west, they, like all other men, must 

 have desired to wander to more genial and passable regions ; 

 and accordingly, nations arising from this branch of the Mon- 

 golic stock, gradually more and more mixed with Caucasians, 

 can be traced southward, down to the great central range of 

 mountains, where they were met by the opposite commixture 

 of swarthy races, while the purest typical form of the bearded 

 type clung to the line of mountain prolongation, or occupied 

 parallels along it to the western extremity of Europe. The 

 commixture of two typical races, as before observed, is often 

 productive of larger growth among individuals, especially 

 if the northern Caucasian predominate. On the edge where 

 they encountered the Hyperborean, they mixed with it, perhaps 

 alternately as subjects or captives, and as masters, until both 

 were pressed by others, again subdued, or driven forward to 

 other regions. Several of these, and other nations hereafter 

 noticed, can be traced back to the Colchian sea-ports, to the 

 shores of the Meotic estuary and Tauric Chersonesus, where 

 materials for navigating the great rivers of Scythia first im- 

 proved their experience to dare the more open sea of the Eux- 

 ine, ascend the Danube, or pass through the Bosphorus into the 



* We find them tenants of Southern Siberia, up to the vicinity of the 

 Jenissei about Krasnojarsk, where Pallas discovered an iron mine still 

 retaining stone hammers and brass tools, ascribed by the present Tahtars 

 *o the Tschutski. 



