TIE VIEW — THE NATURALIST’S LIBRARY. 
649 
sends a chariot drawn by horses to bring his aged father to the 
banks of the Nile ; for he resided at Zoan, on the borders of Go- 
shen, or at On (the Greek Heliopolis), where the sun was honoured 
under the titles of phre and phar. He was in the region where 
the grazier Hi/ksos , invaders and charioteers from high Asia, had 
until lately resided.” 
The arrival of the Centaurs, too, the author considers to bear 
out his opinions ; for the very fact of their presence, their superior 
attainments, and the character of their horses, prove that there 
was a great deal of truth, after all, wrought up in their poetical 
history. “ The irruption,” he says, “ belongs to the earliest 
movement of the cavalry hordes from central Asia, coming upon 
Thrace and Thessaly by the north of the Black Sea, and across 
the lower Danube ; while another, not long after, evidently com- 
posed of a more southern tribe, broke into Asia Minor, and was 
known in tradition by the appellation of Amazons. The first, 
most likely, were Northern-Scythians of High Asia, real horsemen ; 
the second, highland Sacse, S tri-raj as, perhaps Pandu followers 
of Crishna and Ballirama, led by martial queens, wearing long 
clothes, and detached westward from a cause unknown, but both 
more civilized than the Pelasgians of either side of the iEgean : 
the first exclusively riders, the second both riders and charioteers, 
with institutions akin to those of Indian nations.” 
The author then attempts to prove that both these events 
synchronize with the heroic age of Greece, and are sufficiently 
near the periods of the expulsion of the shepherds, the invasion 
of Asia by Sesostris, or Remes II and III, and the Indian epic 
legends, to establish the epoch of great movements through all 
the regions in question, and fix the period when horse, chariot, 
and rider first make their appearance ; the northern nations ex- 
clusively as riders; at Nineveh, in Asia Minor, and in India, as 
charioteers and riders; and in Greece, Palestine, and Egypt, as 
charioteers only. 
“ Comparing, then, these considerations with the claims in fa- 
vour of Africa , set up by late writers, who consider the domestic 
horse was first brought from thence to be subdued in Egypt, we 
find,” says the author, “ no true indigenous wild horse in that 
quarter of the globe, unless the puny koomrah deserve this name ; 
and we appeal to the current of human civilization, which most 
certainly did not set in from central Africa towards the north 
east. Although Numidian horsemen occur, they are not cha- 
rioteers, nor noticed until Carthage and Greek Cyrenaica flou- 
rished, or had already lost their independence ; and then they 
were naked riders, little acquainted with the bridle or the saddle, 
VOL. xiv. 4 Q 
