within the pale of his great Scythian family, the aboriginal nations of the Indian peninsula, who are now generally admitted to be a distinct race from the Hindoos, and who speak the Tamil, Malayalam, Karnátaca, and Telugu languages.

The conjectures of such writers as Professor Rask are worthy of consideration. We shall have further occasion in the sequel to examine the foundation of his opinions, and we shall find that many of them are supported on firmer grounds than those persons who have not investigated the subject would suppose. For the present we must take leave of this topic, after briefly enumerating the principal groupes of nations belonging to that department of the human family which we have termed the Allophylian races.

1. In the West, as aborigines of Western Europe, we have the Euskaldunes, or ancient Iberians, whose language was the Euskarian speech. They are supposed to have inhabited Spain, Gaul, and Italy.

2. Separated from the Euskaldunes by the whole country occupied and, perhaps, wrested from them by the Celtic and German races before the beginning of history, are the Jotune or Ugorian race, the remains, as it should seem, of the aborigines of the North of Europe and Asia, over which they appear to have been spread from the Danish Isles to the river Obi. This groupe of nations includes the Finnish and Lappish tribes, the Tschudes, the Vogules of the Uralian mountains, the Ostiaks of Siberia, and the Magyars or Hungarians.

3. Beyond the Jotuns, towards the north and east, are the Khasova, a race termed by the Russians Samoiedes. They are spread along the northern coast of Europe and Asia, from the White Sea to the mouth of the Lena. Other tribes of the same race are found on the confines of the Chinese and Russian empires, in the high region of Central Asia.

4. Beyond the Samoiedes several fishing and hunting tribes occupy the country which reaches from the Lena to Behring's Straits and the Pacific Ocean. As they speak several distinct languages, they must be accounted different races. There is also some diversity in their physical charac

VOL. III.

ters. All these nations will be described under the collective term of Paralian races.

The Paralian groupe of nations includes the Yenisean Ostiaks, the Yukagiri, the Koriaks and Tchaúkthús, the Namollos, the Kamtschatkans, and the Aino or Kurilians.

5. The high regions of Central Asia are divided between three great pastoral races, the Turkish, the Mongolian, and the Tungusian. With the exception of some few scattered tribes, they are all nations of roving and warlike nomades. One of these races has overturned the khalifat, and the eastern empire; a second, under Tschinghis and his followers, were the greatest conquerors recorded in the history of mankind; the third still holds under its sway China and the half of Eastern Asia.

There are some grounds for believing that these three races of people sprang originally from one stock, and that the Jotuns are allied to them by an ancient and remote affinity. We shall examine the arguments which occur upon these questions.

6. The native races of the Caucasus, consisting of several apparently distinct nations, subdivided into numerous tribes.

7. The Tibetans and the Chinese, together with the Koreans and the Japanese, form a remarkable groupe of nations. Although not referrible by proofs to one race, they bear a great mutual resemblance, and their history will be comprised in the same chapter.

8. The Indo-Chinese nations, or the native tribes of the Indo-Chinese peninsula, or India beyond the Ganges. Most of these nations bear a considerable resemblance to the Chinese in physical characters, and, like them, speak languages of the class termed monosyllabic.

9. The aboriginal races of the Dekhan and of Ceylon, who differ from the Hindoos of Indo-European origin, in language and physical characters.

The Malayans and other races of the Malayan peninsula might be reckoned as another family of Asiatic nations, but

as the great body of this people is found in the islands of the Indian Ocean, from which it appears that colonies were formed on the Malayan coast, I shall reserve the ethnography of this peninsula to be taken up in connexion with that of the Australian and Polynesian countries, with which it is much more connected than with the history of nations on the Asiatic continent.

CHAPTER II.

OF THE EUSKALDUNES, ABORIGINES OF THE SOUTH-WESTERN PARTS OF EUROPE.

SECTION I.-Names - General Survey-Sources of Information.

It is well known that countries of considerable extent on both sides of the Pyrenees, and on the coast of the gulf of Biscay, both in Spain and France, are inhabited by people who constitute a particular race, and preserve among themselves an ancient language, termed by the French " Basque," and by the Spaniards "Bascuence," or "Lengua Bascongada." These people call their national idiom "Euskara, Eusquera,' or "Eskuara," and they give themselves the appellation of Euskaldunac or Euskaldunes, which includes all those who possess or make use of the Euskarian language.* Races who speak foreign idioms have been called by them Erdaldunac, a term which is said to have been bestowed on all other nations, such as the Carthaginians, Romans, as well as the modern Castilians, and to mean " the newly arrived," or those who are supposed to have entered Spain at a later period than the Euskaldunac. They term the country which they inhabit Euskalerria

* Euskaldunac is said to be a contracted form of Euskara-duna, plural, Euskaradunac, and to be derived from Euskara and duna to possess or use. The root concealed in the word Euskara is Eusk, or Esk, which seems to be the primitive designation of the race. By Don Jose F. de Aizquebel, this name is derived from Euski, which, as he says, means the East, or the Sun. Erdaldunac is said by the same writer to mean "Advenæ." Erdara is an Euskarian name, derived from Erdu, to come or arrive.

or Eusquererria.* A grammar of the Euskarian language was published as early as 1607, in Mexico, for the use of the numerous Biscayans who were settled in that country; the author was Balthasar de Etchabie, a native of Guipuscoa; but this idiom was very little known in Europe, and there existed in it only ten printed books, which were chiefly sermons and catechisms, until the jesuit, Larramendi, in 1729, published his celebrated grammar, entitled "El imposible vencido," or "Arte de la Lengua Bascongada." The same indefatigable writer compiled a dictionary of the Biscayan, Latin, and Castilian, which was printed at St. Sebastian in 1745,† and the "prologo" of which is the earliest account that deserves notice of the Euskarian language and its structure and relations. By Larramendi the language was called Cantabric, and the people who spoke it were supposed to be descendants of the Cantabri, who so long resisted the arms of Rome. This, as M. de Humboldt has observed, was a mistake, or in part a result of national vanity. The Basques of France and the Biscayans of Spain may, with greater probability, be supposed to have descended from the Vascones and Varduli, whose country they occupy, than from the Cantabri, who lived beyond them towards the west. Since the time of Larramendi several natives of Spain have engaged in the attempt to elucidate the history of the Biscayan idiom, which they have regarded as the ancient language of their country; but

• See extracts from Juan Bautista de Erro; Alfabeto primitivo de España, by Mr. Erving, of Boston, 1829; and W. Von Humboldt, Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die alten Bewohner Hispaniens.

+ Diccionario Trilingue del Castellano, Bascuence y Latin. Su autor El Padre Manuel de Larramendi, de la Compañia de Jesus, dedicado a la mui noble y mui leal provincia de Guipuzcoa, 1745, 2 tomos in fol. Prologo de las perfeciones de el Basquence.

The best known of these works are Astarloa's " Apologia de la Lengua Bascongada" and Erro's "Alfabeto de la lengua primitiva," and his "Mundo primitivo." There are likewise several works in the Spanish language, on the Biscayan and Iberian antiquities, or on the old inscriptions, coins, and other monuments of Spain, of which the most celebrated are those of Velasquez, Zuniga, and Flores, who wrote on the Celtiberian and Turdetan or Botic coins, and inscriptions. The same subject was treated likewise by Jacob Barry, a Dutch consul, at Seville. Of later date is the work of Iztueta, on the ancient Usages, Dances, and Games of Guipuscoa.