320 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



mean, Lithuanian, and Courlanders, we need not give details, 

 which are already generalized in Balbi (Atlas Ethnographique), 

 and reviewed with as much learning as detail in Mone,* who 

 describes, circumstantially, the national traditions, gods, and 

 religious worship of the different nations, and, among others, of 

 the Prussian. It is remarked, that no people of the north was 

 once so rich in literary monuments ; for though a vast quantity 

 of legends and traditions still exist, there were thirty-one 

 national chronicles consulted by Hennenberger, all of which 

 have perished, excepting five, it is supposed by the contempt 

 of the Teutonic order of knights, and by the neglect of the 

 kings of Poland, who shared the ancient archives. From the 

 above, it is clear, that a vein of indigenous civilization had 

 worked on the Baltic, perhaps drawing its remote source from 

 Bactria, by commercial Colchis, totally distinct from southern 

 lore, excepting in the degree which Greek and Roman inter- 

 course might have afforded, or Jewish wanderers, who early 

 found favor among the Finnic Tahtars of Western Asia, may 

 have introduced. 



THE FINNS OR SUOMI. 



Crossing the Gulf of Finland, we come to the Suomi, Finne- 

 lap, or Finn people, still so called, which, however, notwith- 

 standing the rocky hills, innumerable lakes, and many woods 

 wherein it lies concealed, the three sealike gulfs which surround 

 it, and the rigorous winters of that latitude, has still not escaped 

 perhaps more than half hybridism ; for the northern portion 



* " Geschichte des Heidenthums in nordlichen Europa." The abun- 

 dance of records and manuscripts was here, no doubt, as elsewhere, the 

 consequence of national intermixtures. King Vanland, who wedded 

 Drifva (trade), daughter of old King Snoe, may represent the peaceful 

 mercantile intercourse with the Venetic cities. Snoe himself gives an 

 idea of ermines and peltry, or at least of the high latitude where the trade 

 was carried on. 



