Scythia

a large country situate on the most northern parts of Europe and Asia. The boundaries of Scythia were unknown to the ancients, as no traveller had penetrated beyond the vast tracts of land which lay at the north, -east, and west. Scythia comprehended. the modern kingdoms of Tartary, Ru ia in Asia, Siberia, Muscovy, the Crimea, Poland, part of Hungary, Lithuania, the northern parts of Germany, Sweden, Norway, . The Scythians were divided into several nations or tribes, they had no.«cities, but continually changed their habitation. They inured themselves to bear labour and fatigue; they despised money, and lived upon milk, and covered themselves. with the skins: of. their cattle. Some authors represent them as a savage people, who fed upon human flesh, drank the blood of their enemies, and used the skulls of travellers as ve els in their sacrifices to their ods. Although the ancient Scythians were celebrated as a warlike people, yet their history is too uncertain and obscure to enable us to give any detail which would not prove equally tiresome and uninteresting to the reader. Mr. _ Pinkerton, in a di ertation on their origin, endeavours to prove that they were the most ancient of nations; and he a igns for the place of their first habitation the country known by the name of Persia. From Persia, he thinks, _ they proceeded in numerous hordes westward, surrounded the Euxine, peopled Germany, Italy, Gaul, the countries bordering on the ‘Baltic, with part of Britain and Ireland. That the Scythians were of Asiatic origin cannot, we think, be questioned; and as Persia was peopled ata very early period, it may not improbably have been their parent country: but when our author contends that their empire _ had subsisted for more than 1500 years before Ninus the founder of the A yrian monarchy, and that it extended from Egypt to the Ganges, ~and from the Persian gulf and Indian sea to the Caspian, we cannot help thinking that his prejudices against the Celts, and his desire to do honour to his favourite Goths, have made him advance a paradox inconsistent with the most authentic records of antiquity. His di ert a- tion however is ingenious, and replete with a variety of curious learning.