tions. Sir William Jones very properly remarks, that this paffage fi the utmost limit of Indian chronology to the æra of Noah. To the objection, that Mofes had drawn all his accounts from the Egyptians, we may alfo anfwer with him, that it is indeed probable that at that early period all nations had preferved fome particulars of the great event of the deluge. With the Egyptians and Indians they were already adulterated by a mixture of fable and allegory, and all their accounts were obfcured by a redundancy of fictitious incidents. If that venerable author drew any thing from those sources, it was the plain unadorned truth, expreffed with that noble fimplicity which belongs to it.

(g) Page 233.

According to fcripture, the ark was 300 cubits in length, 50 in breadth, and 30 in height. Taking the cubit at only 18 inches, it will be found that it must have been of the burden of 42,413 tons. A first-rate man of war, of 100 guns, is between 2200 and 2300 tons; and confequently the ark had the capacity of 18 of these ships, the largest in prefent ufe, and might carry 20,000 men, with provifions for fix months, befides the weight of 1800 cannons, and of all military ftores. It was then by much the largest ship ever built. Can we doubt of its being fufficient to contain eight perfons, and about 200 or 250 pairs of quadrupeds? a number to which, according to Mr. Buffon, all the various diftinct species may be reduced, together with all the fubfiftence neceffary for a twelvemonth? The birds and reptiles would not, certainly, require very great additional space.

(b) Page 238.

Local circumstances may, however, greatly alter climates. Provence complains of much feverer cold than it experienced fome centuries ago. The reafon is, that the forefts formerly growing on the fummits of the mountains being entirely destroyed, it is now more expofed to the northeaft winds, defcending without break from the Alps. In fome of the high valleys of thofe mountains fnows have accumulated from accidental hushes,

proceeding

young men

proceeding from overloaded icy fummits; and in fuch places an increase of
cold is felt in the fubjacent diftricts. It has been pretended that the gla-
cieres of Switzerland have generally extended themselves; but their general
extenfion is far from afcertained. When we were there fome
told us, that those of Grindelwald had much advanced within the laft 15
years; but feveral old men affured us that they had feen them ftill more ad-
vanced into the plain 50 years ago than they are at prefent. A hot wind,
which they call the Snow-eater, confumes more fnow in eight days than
does without it a whole fummer's fun. I have been affured that they have
been very much decreafed fince our journey thither. Years are not alike
either in heat or cold, and much less amongst mountains; and consequently
the increase or diminution of thefe fnows is not permanent, but accidental.

(i) Page 239.

The Scythians, according to Herodotus, were, and reckoned themselves, a new nation. They computed only 1000 years from their first establishment on the banks of the Danube, or of the Borifthenes. These were hufbandmen. The wandering tribes dwelt round the fea of Afof, on the Don and Wolga, in the Cuban beyond Caucafus, on the northern and eastern borders of the Cafpian fea. Those feated on the Borifthenes occupied no more than eleven days journey, or at moft 80 leagues of country, towards the north. Beyond them they themselves faid that the country was uninhabitable, from the quantity of feathers (fnow) which fell from the heavens. The Greeks, indeed, talked of many nations, as the Hyperboreans, the Arifmafpians, and the Anthropophages, to the north of the Scythians. Herodotus feems to give no credit to the fables told of these, but, from the informations he had received, believed that all was folitude beyond, both to the north and east.. He was, no doubt, mistaken; but it was only in fuppofing abfolutely null a very thin and scanty population. These northern regions probably had some inhabitants long before the date he here gives to the Scythian nation; but, as we shall hereafter fhew, it is not improbable that before that date the lands they inhabited in his time were covered by the northern extension

L

of the Euxine fea, which both natural indications and antient records point out. Before that fea was diminished by the breaking down of its fouthern mounds on the Bofphorus of Thrace, they lived much higher up on the Borifthenes; but when more fouthern lands were uncovered, and the north grew colder by the dereliction of the fea, they came down the river, and became nearer neighbours to the Greeks and more polifhed nations of Afia. These fnows and eight months of winter, which Herodotus describes. in his time in their then country, which is the moft fouthern part of Ruffian Ukraine and Tartary, and which are supposed to have been inhabited only 1000 years before the hiftorian, and to be ftill very thinly peopled, by no means fupport the fyftem of Mr. Bailly. To the east, except their short and late irruption into Media, they kept on the defenfive against the Perfians, in which they were favoured not by their numbers, but by the barrenness and difficulties of the country they inhabited.

(k) Page 240.

It was in 1218 that Jenghiz-Khan advanced against the fultan of Karafm. He was the conductor of the first great irruption of the northern nations into fouthern Afia. This conqueror, having caufed himself to be acknowledged grand Khan of the Mongol Tartars, had already fubdued all eastern Tartary inhabited by the Mantchoux, and had reunited to his dominions all western and northern Tartary now fubject to Ruffia. In the time of this irruption Indoftan was governed by feveral fovereigns, the most powerful of whom was the king of the Patans, the most northern nation of that country. The fultan of Karafm, of the family of the Seljukians, poffeffed part of Turkestan, all Tranfoxiana, and the best part of antient Parthia, called Iran and Irac gemi, as alfo northern Perfia, called Fars. The king of the greater Armenia paid tribute to him. Georgia had its independent princes. The calif Naffer reigned at Bagdat over Chaldea or Irac Araby, over part of Mefopotamia and the three Arabias. The Atabequite princes of Moufel, defcendants of the great Nourradin, reigned over part of Syria and the remainder of Mefopotamia; the fucceffors of Saladin held the reft of Syria

and

and Egypt. It was then Almalkamel, nephew of Saladin. The fultans of Iconia of the third branch of the Seljukians were masters of Biladersoum or Anatolia. The French had at that time feized Conftantinople and the remains of the western empire. The diffenfions of all these fovereigns favoured the conquefts of this invader in Afia. In 1213 he invaded the feven provinces of northern China, then called Kitay, the emperor of which, called by the Mongols Alou Khan, loft both his throne and life on this occafion. The generals of Jenghiz-Khan foon after added Kurje or Correa to his conquefts; and he was preparing to add the country of Mangi or Matchin (fouthern China), then ruled by a diftinct monarch, to his dominions, when death arrefted him in the midst of his triumphs. His fon Kublai-Khan purfued the enterprise, and was the first fovereign of all China. One hundred years after him Timur-Khan or Tamerlan, who pretended to be iffued from him, pushed his conquefts ftill further, and made himself mafter of Indoftan.

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