THE BIBLE PEDIGREE OP THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD. 121^ 



be confuted both on general grounds and through other details- 

 of Herodotus' own story. 



The mountain chain of the Caucasus is 670 miles long as the 

 crow flies, and for one-fourth of its length itself skirts the 

 eastern shores of the Black Sea, while at the opposite, or south- 

 western end, it all but reaches to the Caspian Sea. There is a 

 pass at this point, called the Kaspiai Pylai (or Caspian Gates),, 

 which Herodotus distinctly says that the Kimmerioi did not 

 cross, because the Scythians in pursuing them crossed it, got 

 into Media, and lost their prey ; and there is just one other pass, 

 right in the middle of the chain, which is no less than 8,000 

 feet high.* What the Scythians were pursuing the Kimmerioi 

 for it is hard to make out, when the latter had so readily vacated 

 their lands for them ; but hard indeed it is to conceive that this 

 nation fled eastward for six or seven hundred miles from their 

 enemies (as the maps will show), and finished by making this 

 tremendous ascent with their women and children and household 

 goods while all the time they knew that there were vast 

 untenanted plains and forests to the west of them, which 

 centuries later absorbed untold millions of men. 



But again, Herodotus tells us that the Scythians came upon 

 them from the east, that the royal tribe alone was bold enough 

 to vote for battle, instead of flight, that discussion grew so hot 

 that it ended in mortal combat between them, and the rest of 

 the Kimmerioi, and that the royal tribe were all slain and 

 buried in one common grave near the river Tyras. 'Now this 

 river lay far to the west of the places that in this historian's 

 time retained the name Kimmerian. It is therefore perfectly 

 clear that these Kimmerioi fled from their enemies not eastward, 

 but westward ; so they certainly could not have been the same 

 Gimmiraa, who in their raiding march are found Jirst, far east- 

 ward in Assyria, and then far westward at Sardis ; although 

 they may have been related to them as New Englanders are to 

 Englishmen now. 



The question is whether there were not Gimmiraa already 

 settled in Asia at the same time as the Kimmerioi occupied that 

 southern tract of Eussia. 



Now, prior to Esarhaddon's defeat of this people, we find a 

 prayer of his to the Sun-God, beseeching him for succour, 

 because " Kastarit, lord of the city of Kar-kassi and Marmiti- 

 arsu, lord of the city of the Modes," had revolted against him, 



* Smith's Did. and Eng. Cycl.^ " Caucasus." 



