d aid. These people were all
wandering and half-savage tribes, like the Scythians themselves,
though each seems to have possessed its own special and distinctive
mark of barbarity. One tribe were accustomed to carry home the heads
of the enemies which they had slain in battle, and each one, impaling
his own dreadful trophy upon a stake, would set it up upon his
house-top, over the chimney, where they imagined that it would have
the effect of a charm, and serve as a protection for the family.
Another tribe lived in habits of promiscuous intercourse, like the
lower orders of animals; and so, as the historian absurdly states,
being, in consequence of this mode of life, all connected together by
the ties of consanguinity, they lived in perpetual peace and good
will, without any envy, or jealousy, or other evil passion. A third
occupied a region so infested with serpents that they were once driven
wholly out of the country by them. It was said of these people that,
once in every year, they were all metamorphosed into wolves, and,
after remaining for a few days in this form, they were transformed
again into men. A fourth tribe painted their bodies blue and red, and
a fifth were cannibals.

The most remarkable, however, of all the tales related about these
northern savages was the story of the Sauromateans and their Amazonian
wives. The Amazons were a nation of masculine and ferocious women, who
often figure in ancient histories and legends. They rode on horseback
astride like men, and their courage and strength in battle were such
that scarcely any troops could subdue them. It happened, however, upon
one time, that some Greeks conquered a body of them somewhere upon the
shores of the Euxine Sea, and took a large number of them prisoners.
They placed these prisoners on board of three ships, and put to sea.
The Amazons rose upon their captors and threw them overboard, and thus
obtained possession of the ships. They immediately proceeded toward
the shore, and landed, not knowing where they were. It happened to be
on the northwestern coast of the sea that they landed. Here they
roamed up and down the country, until presently they fell in with a
troop of horses. These they seized and mounted, arming themselves, at
the same time, either with the weapons which they had procured on
board the ships, or fabricated, themselves, on the shore. Thus
organized and equipped, they began to make excursions for plunder, and
soon became a most