298 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



iEgean, and ultimately to become intrepid seamen. Though 

 they possessed some industrial knowledge, destitution, famine, 

 or other causes, made them fierce savages, often positive can- 

 nibals. Such, it is likely, were the Cyclopeans, Lestrigons, 

 Sicanes, and Siculian swarms, which long terrified the more 

 southern Asiatic emigrants on the shores of the Mediterranean. 

 But before the historical era, they were already followed by 

 others (the mining and forging Idxi Dactyli?) and blended 

 with the first Gomerian people that came westward, and 

 together with them, finally merged into various Celtic tribes of 

 Italy, Gaul, and Spain, and occupied the north coast of the 

 Adriatic, where, notwithstanding the character they bear with 

 posterity, they were advancing in the arts of civilization. 



Others of a still greater Scythic innervation, it may be 

 inferred, penetrated by the passes on both shores, along the 

 western Caucasian chain, and crossing the ridges of Armenia 

 Minor, came upon the Upper Euphrates, skirted the eastern 

 flanks of Ammanus, till they reached the Syrian coast ; or, 

 continuing to descend the banks of the great river, formed a 

 portion of that Scythic element which is constantly traced in 

 the Hebrew historical records, and repeatedly noticed in the 

 heroic age of Arabian traditions. 



In this way they constituted the chief source of that red- 

 haired people which is still found in the mountains of Pales- 

 tine, and is known as the Montefict Arab, and probably formed 

 the first or primitive Phoenician pirates and traders. A tribe 

 of this people was extant on the Euphrates, under the name of 

 Ehustumi ; others occupied the Arabian islands ; and if all 

 the earliest Scythian tribes were of the same mixed origin, they 

 were the invaders who ruled in Egypt by the names of Hyksos 

 and shepherds; the same who were the cause why red-haired* 



* The quality of red hair belongs exclusively to northern Asia and Eu- 

 rope ; beside the Northmen and their descendants, it is still almost wholly 

 national among several mixed tribes of northern Russia. If Assvria once 



