THE HUMAN SPECIES. 371 



Macedonian corps. A third avenue still leads through the 

 Bolan Pass to the Etymander or Helmund, and Lake Aria, 

 now Zurrah, whence there is a caravan route by Yezd, through 

 the Great Arian Desert, of above fifty days' journey, for loaded 

 camels to Ispahan. Another passes to the north from Dooshak, 

 near the above lake, by Furrah, to Herat, Meshed, to the 

 Atrack River, and Asterabad. But the fourth of these lines is 

 the great and most ancient route of migration, not so njuch to 

 the Indus, as from the high table land of Thibet to the Oxus, 

 in remote periods apparently much more available than at 

 present, for the inland sea of Western Asia had not yet 

 entirely shrunk into the Caspian and Aral, and the rivers now 

 lost in sand, or wholly dried up, were still flowing to that 

 Mediterranean. It became the high road from Kachgar by 

 Ota, across the Bolor range, through Karatighin to Bactra, or 

 Balkh, was the great outlet from Hindu-Koosh down the Oxus, 

 or along the flanks of Paropamisus to the west, and by the 

 troglodyte city of Bamean, entered the two passes of Kohi- 

 Baba, by Cabul, and Jalalabad (Nagara), to the Indus. ' The 

 other great line is through the Kiptchak and Gakchal chains, 

 by the Kaksou and Terek passes, leading north-west to Och or 

 Takti Soliman, on the Jaxartes ; it is a caravan route, still in 

 use to Orenburg, in Russia. 



THE SEMITIC RACES. 



It was along these avenues that the moving colonists 

 descended, both from the plateau of Thibet, and from Hindu- 

 Koosh. We have seen how they penetrated to India ; how 

 among other nations the Arab and Indoo Arab formed the prin- 

 cipal basis of the Ethiopian stem, till the whole of the original 

 nations, as Egyptians, Cushites, and Habesh, notwithstanding 

 that more northern, and even fair-haired tribes were merged 

 in thern, were finally driven across the Red Sea into Africa. 



Thus we have noticed how Caucasian characteristics deepen 



