the Germanic Races into Europe. 43 



tliree, open to the migratory wanderers from Asia to Europe. 

 The most southern of these, which required the navigation of 

 the Hellespont or the Thracian Bosphorus, may be supposed 

 to have been the course pursued by the ancient Pelasgi, or 

 some still older southern Allophyliae, in times lying beyond 

 all history. This road, however, we know was early closed 

 by the occupation of the whole of Asia Minor by Phrygians, 

 Lydians, Lycians, Phoenicians, and other civilized and war- 

 like people, whose presence entirely precluded the approach of 

 any migratory horde to the shores of the Propontis. Beyond 

 this, therefore, later migratory tribes, including, perhaps, the 

 earliest pioneers of Keltic colonization, would find open for 

 them the narrow passage formed by the lower valleys between 

 the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, and then reaching the 

 northern shores of the Kimmerian Bosphorus, they would 

 enter by the passage between the Carpathian Mountains and 

 the Euxine into the fertile valley of the Danube. This road, 

 also, in itself narrow and straightened, was closed against 

 such nomade intruders long prior to the dawn of history, by 

 the occupation of the whole country around the lower Danube 

 by Scythic tribes belonging to the Thracian division. These 

 warlike tribes were in undisputed possession of this important 

 European area when we obtain our first glimpse of them in 

 the pages of Homer, and no doubt can be entertained of their 

 ability to withstand the encroachments of all later intruders. 

 Thus, then, at the assumed period of the immigration of the 

 Germanic nomades, after the entire occupation of Southern 

 and Central Europe by older races, there remained only one 

 road open for tribes immigrating westward from Asia into 

 Europe, through the Ural passage to the north of the Caspian 

 Sea ; and thence — the southern road through the valley of the 

 Danube being now closed — they must have crossed the vast 

 prairies of Russia, along the northern edge of the impenetrable 

 forests of Volhynia and Poland, and the watershed of the 

 Dnieper and the Vistula — the route pursued by the Huns, 

 under Attila, in the fifth century — and thence along the 

 tributaries of the Vistula to the Baltic. Here the ethnologist 

 may be said to strike the trail of the first Germanic nomades. 

 The later Cimbri or Kymri, and the younger Scytho- Sarmatians 



