512 
SECOND REPORT- 1832. 
racters to intermixtures of race. But this is altogether gratui¬ 
tous. If we may judge of the purity of race by purity of lan¬ 
guage, the Yakuts, who inhabit the shores of the Lena, must 
be considered as of unmixed Turkish race. Their speech, as 
M. Julius Klaproth has proved, is nearly that of the Osmanli 
themselves, and it has been said that a Turk of Stamboul would 
be understood among the Yakuts on the Lena. Probability is 
in favour of the opinion of Blumenbach, that a long residence in 
the climate of North-eastern Asia has changed the features of 
the race. The language of the Yakuts being unmixed, we may 
be allowed to infer from this circumstance the purity of their 
stock, though their features are those of the Mongoles and Kal- 
mucs. 
“ Before I take leave of the Caucasian race, I shall offer some 
further remarks on this designation. It is applied, as we are 
informed, to nations of this class, because their traditions de¬ 
duce them from Mount Caucasus. But is this really a fact ? 
The mountains of Asia Minor, of Thrace, and of Hellas, are all 
famous in Grecian story. Mountains were of old, in the sim¬ 
ple and primitive age wdiich long preceded the erection of tem¬ 
ples, consecrated to the worship of the unseen power whom all 
nations venerated. The tops of Olympus and Mount Meru in 
the poetry of Greece and India were the resting-places where 
father Zeus and Indra descended from the clouds to converse 
with mortals. Caucasus came in for its share in the general 
respect paid to high places; according to a story, of which it 
is difficult to conjecture the meaning, it was the dwelling-place 
of Prometheus, where that ambiguous personage, by turns a 
titan, a teacher of mechanical arts, and a maker of man, and 
then a natural philosopher, is said to have watched the move¬ 
ments of the heavenly bodies. I cannot remember any tradi¬ 
tion among the fabulists or historians of Greece which admits 
of a construction answering to the hypothesis of M. Cuvier, or 
deducing the human race from Mount Caucasus. Nor can any¬ 
thing more to the purpose be traced in the mythology of the 
Oriental nations. The authentic narrative of the Hebrews 
leads us certainly to Mount Ararat in Armenia for the resting- 
place of the ark; but that is far from Caucasus. 
“ Another objection to the term Caucasian, as applied to an 
assemblage of nations consisting principally of the Indo-Euro¬ 
peans and Semitic tribes, arises from the fact that the chain of 
Caucasus has been from immemorial time the seat of nations who 
are proved by their languages to be entirely distinct from both 
of these celebrated races. The idioms of the real Caucasian 
nations have been carefully examined by Julius Klaproth. The 
result has been a reduction of these numerous dialects to a few 
