the very natural suspicion, that the Huns of the North
derived a considerable reenforcement from the ruin of the dynasty of
the South, which, in the course of the third century, submitted to the
dominion of China; that the bravest warriors marched away in search
of their free and adventurous countrymen; and that, as they had been
divided by prosperity, they were easily reunited by the common hardships
of their adverse fortune. The Huns, with their flocks and herds, their
wives and children, their dependents and allies, were transported to the
west of the Volga, and they boldly advanced to invade the country of the
Alani, a pastoral people, who occupied, or wasted, an extensive tract of
the deserts of Scythia. The plains between the Volga and the Tanais were
covered with the tents of the Alani, but their name and manners were
diffused over the wide extent of their conquests; and the painted tribes
of the Agathyrsi and Geloni were confounded among their vassals. Towards
the North, they penetrated into the frozen regions of Siberia, among the
savages who were accustomed, in their rage or hunger, to the taste
of human flesh; and their Southern inroads were pushed as far as the
confines of Persia and India. The mixture of Somatic and German blood
had contributed to improve the features of the Alani, * to whiten their
swarthy complexions, and to tinge their hair with a yellowish cast,
which is seldom found in the Tartar race. They were less deformed in
their persons, less brutish in their manners, than the Huns; but they
did not yield to those formidable Barbarians in their martial and
independent spirit; in the love of freedom, which rejected even the use
of domestic slaves; and in the love of arms, which considered war and
rapine as the pleasure and the glory of mankind. A naked cimeter, fixed
in the ground, was the only object of their religious worship; the
scalps of their enemies formed the costly trappings of their horses;
and they viewed, with pity and contempt, the pusillanimous warriors, who
patiently expected the infirmities of age, and the tortures of lingering
disease. On the banks of the Tanais, the military power of the Huns
and the Alani encountered each other with equal valor, but with unequal
success. The Huns prevailed in the bloody contest; the king of the Alani
was slain; and the remains of the vanquished nation were dispersed by
the ordinary alternative of flight or submission. A colony of exiles
found a s