326 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



themselves established in their present abode, where hey 

 incorporated the remnant of ancient Huns, still left in Panno- 

 nia. They long ravaged central Europe, until they became 

 Christians in the eleventh, from which period they have been a 

 repeated spoil of the Osmanlis. The Magyars offer another 

 instance where the Finnic stem produces gigantic men; for the 

 Hungarian grenadiers and the national heydukes are more 

 generally of great stature than any other nation of Europe. 

 During the time they resided near the Black Sea, they appear 

 to have been in close friendship with the Zychi or Circassian 

 tribes ; for they have not only a great external correspondence 

 of appearance, but the Circassian language, like the old Arme- 

 nian and the Hungarian, contains a great number of Finnic 

 words, and the Lesghi-Avares of the same mountains have 

 many Hunnic proper names still retained among them. 



It is probably to these tribes of pure Caucasians, or of 

 hybrid Finns, that the Gog and Magog giants of antiquity, or 

 rather the Haiguge and Magiuge of Curds and Persians so 

 long the terror of south-western Asia, are to be traced ; for the 

 pass of Derbend, on the Caspian, was already, in remote ages, 

 vainly closed by artificial defences, to keep them from pene- 

 trating to the south.* 



The interunion of Hyperborean with northern Caucasian 

 races constituting also, in our view, the Ouralian stem of 

 arctic Asia, it follows, that in this place the Toorkee tribes, 

 who have the same conformation of the skull as the bearded 

 stock, should be classed with the Finn or Tschudic group, 

 although they are known originally to have been Hyperboreans 

 of the most deformed personal exterior, according to European 

 notions. They have already been mentioned in the notice of 



* Portae Caspioe and Pylae Albanije of the classical writers ; Derbend, 

 gate of security, in Persia ; Demir Capi, iron gate of the Turks. The 

 Chinese wall, the Sassanian lines of Chorassan, and the Roman wall of 

 Britain, were all constructed to arrest the progress of the same Hyperbo- 

 reans of mixed origin. 



