eque Orien tale, p. 878.]

[Footnote 14: See the Diets of the ancient Huns, (De Guignes, tom. ii.
p. 26,) and a curious description of those of Zingis, (Vie de Gengiscan,
l. i. c. 6, l. iv. c. 11.) Such assemblies are frequently mentioned in
the Persian history of Timur; though they served only to countenance the
resolutions of their master.]

[Footnote 15: Montesquieu labors to explain a difference, which has not
existed, between the liberty of the Arabs, and the perpetual slavery of
the Tartars. (Esprit des Loix, l. xvii. c. 5, l. xviii. c. 19, &c.)]

The memory of past events cannot long be preserved in the frequent and
remote emigrations of illiterate Barbarians. The modern Tartars are
ignorant of the conquests of their ancestors; [16] and our knowledge of
the history of the Scythians is derived from their intercourse with the
learned and civilized nations of the South, the Greeks, the Persians,
and the Chinese. The Greeks, who navigated the Euxine, and planted their
colonies along the sea-coast, made the gradual and imperfect discovery
of Scythia; from the Danube, and the confines of Thrace, as far as the
frozen Maeotis, the seat of eternal winter, and Mount Caucasus, which,
in the language of poetry, was described as the utmost boundary of
the earth. They celebrated, with simple credulity, the virtues of the
pastoral life: [17] they entertained a more rational apprehension of the
strength and numbers of the warlike Barbarians, [18] who contemptuously
baffled the immense armament of Darius, the son of Hystaspes. [19] The
Persian monarchs had extended their western conquests to the banks of
the Danube, and the limits of European Scythia. The eastern provinces of
their empire were exposed to the Scythians of Asia; the wild inhabitants
of the plains beyond the Oxus and the Jaxartes, two mighty rivers, which
direct their course towards the Caspian Sea. The long and memorable
quarrel of Iran and Touran is still the theme of history or romance: the
famous, perhaps the fabulous, valor of the Persian heroes, Rustan and
Asfendiar, was signalized, in the defence of their country, against
the Afrasiabs of the North; [20] and the invincible spirit of the same
Barbarians resisted, on the same ground, the victorious arms of Cyrus
and Alexander. [21] 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
ina