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.
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