Rustan and
Asfendiar, was signalized, in the defence of their country, against the
Afrasiabs of the North; and the invincible spirit of the same Barbarians
resisted, on the same ground, the victorious arms of Cyrus and
Alexander. In the eyes of the Greeks and Persians, the real geography of
Scythia was bounded, on the East, by the mountains of Imaus, or Caf; and
their distant prospect of the extreme and inaccessible parts of Asia was
clouded by ignorance, or perplexed by fiction. But those inaccessible
regions are the ancient residence of a powerful and civilized nation,
which ascends, by a probable tradition, above forty centuries; and which
is able to verify a series of near two thousand years, by the perpetual
testimony of accurate and contemporary historians. The annals of China
illustrate the state and revolutions of the pastoral tribes, which
may still be distinguished by the vague appellation of Scythians, or
Tartars; the vassals, the enemies, and sometimes the conquerors, of a
great empire; whose policy has uniformly opposed the blind and impetuous
valor of the Barbarians of the North. From the mouth of the Danube to
the Sea of Japan, the whole longitude of Scythia is about one hundred
and ten degrees, which, in that parallel, are equal to more than five
thousand miles. The latitude of these extensive deserts cannot be so
easily, or so accurately, measured; but, from the fortieth degree, which
touches the wall of China, we may securely advance above a thousand
miles to the northward, till our progress is stopped by the excessive
cold of Siberia. In that dreary climate, instead of the animated picture
of a Tartar camp, the smoke that issues from the earth, or rather from
the snow, betrays the subterraneous dwellings of the Tongouses, and the
Samoides: the want of horses and oxen is imperfectly supplied by the
use of reindeer, and of large dogs; and the conquerors of the earth
insensibly degenerate into a race of deformed and diminutive savages,
who tremble at the sound of arms.

Chapter XXVI: Progress of The Huns.--Part II.

The Huns, who under the reign of Valens threatened the empire of Rome,
had been formidable, in a much earlier period, to the empire of China.
Their ancient, perhaps their original, seat was an extensive, though dry
and barren, tract of country, immediately on the north side of the great
wall. Their place is at present occupied by the forty-nine Hords or
Banners of the Mongous, a pastoral