Sometimes They Say, They Intend To Go To Cologne To Bring Home The Three
Wise Kings Into Their Own Country;
Sometimes they propose to punish the
avarice and pride of the Romans, who formerly oppressed them; sometimes to
conquer the
Barbarous nations of the north; sometimes to moderate the fury
of the Germans with their own mildness; sometimes in derision they say that
they intend going in pilgrimage to the shrine of St James in Galicia. By
means of these pretences, some indiscreet governors of provinces have
entered into league with them, and have, granted them free passage through
their territories; but which leagues they have ever violated, to the
certain ruin and destruction of these princes and their unhappy countries.
[1] Hakluyt, I, 22.
[2] Acre, in Palestine - E.
CHAP. VII.
Sketch of the Revolutions in Tartary.
Our limits do not admit of any detailed account of the history of those
numerous and warlike pastoral nations, which in all ages have occupied the
vast bounds of that region, which has been usually denominated Scythia by
the ancients, and Tartary by the moderns: yet it seems necessary to give in
this place, a comprehensive sketch of the revolutions which have so
strikingly characterized that storehouse of devastating conquerors, to
elucidate the various travels into Tartary which are contained in this
first book of our work; and in this division of our plan, we have been
chiefly guided by the masterly delineations on the same subject, of the
eloquent historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire[1].
In their navigation of the Euxine, and by planting colonies on its coasts,
the Greeks became acquainted with Western Scythia, extending from the
Danube, along the northern frontiers of Thrace, to mount Caucasus. The
great extent of the ancient Persian Empire, which reached at one period
from the Danube to the Indus, exposed its whole northern frontier to the
Scythian nations, as far to the east as the mountains of Imaus or Caf, now
called the Belur-tag. The still more eastern parts of Scythia or Tartary
were known of old to the Chinese, and stretch to the utmost north-eastern
bounds of Asia. Thus from the Danube and Carpathian mountains, in long.
26 deg.. E, to the promontory of Tschuts-koi-nos, or the East Cape of Asia, in
long. 190 deg.. E. this vast region extends in length 160 degrees of longitude,
or not less than 8000 miles. Its southern boundaries are more difficultly
ascertainable: but, except where they are pressed northwards by the
anciently civilized empire of China, these may be assumed at a medium on
the thirty-fifth degree of north latitude; from, whence Scythia or Tartary
extends in breadth to the extremity of the frozen north.
Next to the nomadic nations of Western Scythia, who encountered and baffled
the arms of Darius, King of Persia, under the general name of Scythians,
who were perhaps congeneric, or the same with those afterwards known by the
name of Goths, the dreaded name of the Huns became known to the declining
Roman Empire.
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