them Saca since that is the name they give to all the Scythians. The Bactrians and the Sacæ had for leader Hystaspes, the son of Darius and of Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus. The Arians (of Herat) carried Median bows, but in other respects were equipped like the Bactrians. The Parthians and Chorasmians, with the Sogdians, the Gandarians, and the Dadicæ, had the Bactrian equipment in all respects. The Caspians were clad in cloaks of skin, and carried the cane bow of their country, and the scymitar.' The Bactrians and the Caspians furnished also horsemen, armed like the foot-soldiers.

From Canon Rawlinson's foot-notes we learn that the Hyrcanians, an Arian race, probably inhabited the lovely and wellwooded valley of Astrabad, watered by the river now known as the Gurgan. The Caspian, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, was called the Hyrcanian Sea by the historians of Alexander, and in the Zendavesta this district appears under the name of Vehrkana, the Urkanieh of the 13th century. The Parthians dwelt between the Hyrcanians and the Sarangians, along the southern flank of the Elburz mountains, now called Atak, or 'The Skirt.' The country is at present almost a desert, but covered with extensive ruins, attesting its ancient cultivation. The Parthians were of Scythian origin, and escaped destruction by the Aryans no doubt through the natural difficulties of their position. The Chorasmians, again, were an Aryan people, inhabiting the oasis of Khwarezm, or Khiva,— the Khairizas of the Zendavesta. In Alexander's time they seem to have been independent, and to have been governed by a native ruler, named by the Greeks Pharasmenes, who dispatched a friendly embassy to the Macedonian madman.' The Sogdians also came from the Aryan stock. Their country, the Çugdha of the Zendavesta and known to Mohammedan writers as the Vale of Soghd, extended from the Jaxartes to the Oxus, and southward to Bactria. Their capital city Maracanda will

hereafter be mentioned in connection with Alexander. The Apetol of Herodotus occupied the rich valley of the HeriRood, which is designated Hariva in the inscriptions of Darius.

In the Greek legends of the Assyrian era, no nation is more favourably distinguished than that of the Bactrians, whose apocryphal king Oxyartes is described as valiantly holding his own against Ninus, though finally compelled to yield to the superior arms and fortune of Semiramis. It is certain that the Aryans settled in this province at a very early period, and it is not impossible that Bactra may have been the capital of Persia at a time anterior to the reign of Kei Khosroo, or Cyrus the Great, who experienced considerable difficulty in reducing the Bactrians beneath his sway. In the Hindoo legends of the 3rd and 4th centuries before the Christian era, they appear as the Bahlikas, afterwards easily corrupted into Balkh, the modern representative of Bactra.

A less easy task is it to place the Saca of Herodotus, unless they lined the banks of the old channel of the Oxus. They have certainly nothing in common with the Sacia of Ptolemy, which rather corresponds with the provinces of Kashgar and Yarkund. Of Turanian origin, they were famous for their valour, and in Alexander's time fought as allies under the banner of Darius. A century later the Sacæ, in conjunction with kindred tribes of Tatars, overthrew the short-lived GrecoBactrian kingdom, and occupied the entire region between the Aral and the Indus. They even crossed that river, but sustained a signal repulse about B. c. 56. They were subsequently conquered by the Parthians, and finally absorbed by the Sassanides. Of the Caspians it may suffice to say that they were the ancient inhabitants of the provinces now known as Ghilan and Mazanderan; while the Dadicæ, it is suggested, may have been the ancestors of the Tats or Tujeeks, and may have

them Saca since that is the name they give to all the Scythians. The Bactrians and the Saca had for leader Hystaspes, the son of Darius and of Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus. The Arians (of Herat) carried Median bows, but in other respects were equipped like the Bactrians. The Parthians and Chorasmians, with the Sogdians, the Gandarians, and the Dadicæ, had the Bactrian equipment in all respects. The Caspians were clad in cloaks of skin, and carried the cane bow of their country, and the scymitar.' The Bactrians and the Caspians furnished also horsemen, armed like the foot-soldiers.

From Canon Rawlinson's foot-notes we learn that the Hyrcanians, an Arian race, probably inhabited the lovely and wellwooded valley of Astrabad, watered by the river now known as the Gurgan. The Caspian, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, was called the Hyrcanian Sea by the historians of Alexander, and in the Zendavesta this district appears under the name of Vehrkana, the Urkanieh of the 13th century. The Parthians dwelt between the Hyrcanians and the Sarangians, along the southern flank of the Elburz mountains, now called Atak, or The Skirt.' The country is at present almost a desert, but covered with extensive ruins, attesting its ancient cultivation. The Parthians were of Scythian origin, and escaped destruction by the Aryans no doubt through the natural difficulties of their position. The Chorasmians, again, were an Aryan people, inhabiting the oasis of Khwarezm, or Khiva,— the Khairizas of the Zendavesta. In Alexander's time they seem to have been independent, and to have been governed by a native ruler, named by the Greeks Pharasmenes, who dispatched a friendly embassy to the 'Macedonian madman.' The Sogdians also came from the Aryan stock. Their country, the Çugdha of the Zendavesta and known to Mohammedan writers as the Vale of Soghd, extended from the Jaxartes to the Oxus, and southward to Bactria. Their capital city Maracanda will

hereafter be mentioned in connection with Alexander. The Apelo of Herodotus occupied the rich valley of the HeriRood, which is designated Hariva in the inscriptions of Darius.

In the Greek legends of the Assyrian era, no nation is more favourably distinguished than that of the Bactrians, whose apocryphal king Oxyartes is described as valiantly holding his own against Ninus, though finally compelled to yield to the superior arms and fortune of Semiramis. It is certain that the Aryans settled in this province at a very early period, and it is not impossible that Bactra may have been the capital of Persia at a time anterior to the reign of Kei Khosroo, or Cyrus the Great, who experienced considerable difficulty in reducing the Bactrians beneath his sway. In the Hindoo legends of the 3rd and 4th centuries before the Christian era, they appear as the Bahlikas, afterwards easily corrupted into Balkh, the modern representative of Bactra.

A less easy task is it to place the Saca of Herodotus, unless they lined the banks of the old channel of the Oxus. They have certainly nothing in common with the Sacia of Ptolemy, which rather corresponds with the provinces of Kashgar and Yarkund. Of Turanian origin, they were famous for their valour, and in Alexander's time fought as allies under the banner of Darius. A century later the Saca, in conjunction with kindred tribes of Tatars, overthrew the short-lived GrecoBactrian kingdom, and occupied the entire region between the Aral and the Indus. They even crossed that river, but sustained a signal repulse about B. c. 56. They were subsequently conquered by the Parthians, and finally absorbed by the Sassanides. Of the Caspians it may suffice to say that they were the ancient inhabitants of the provinces now known as Ghilan and Mazanderan; while the Dadicæ, it is suggested, may have been the ancestors of the Tats or Tajeeks, and may have

emigrated across the Hindoo Koosh from their early settlements beside the Gandarians.

The ancients, it may be briefly added, divided central and eastern Asia into Scythia-extra-Imaum and Scythia-intraImaum, the latter comprising Khiva, Bokhara, Khokan, Eastern Toorkestan, and Badakhshan. Their idea of Mount Imaus, however, was as imaginative as Baron Humboldt's description of the Bolor range, which is supposed to have been identical with the former. The name is clearly derived from the Sanscrit Himarat,-Latine hiems'-which is still preserved in the modern Himalaya. The Bolor mountains, as designed by Humboldt and Carl Ritter, would form the meridianal axis of Central Asia, and from their point of view is correctly enough described in Dr Wm Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, where the Bolor range,-assumed to be the ancient Imaus, is pronounced to be 'one link of a long series of elevated ranges running, as it were, from south to north, which, with axes parallel to each other, but alternating in their localities, extend from Cape Comorin to the Icy Sea, between the 64th and 75th degrees of longitude, keeping a mean direction of S.S.E. and N.N.W. Since Humboldt's theory was first propounded, it has been ascertained that his Bolor Dagh is not a chain of mountains, but an extremely elevated plateau, fully 16,000 feet above the level of the sea, intersected by ridges running from east to west, with open stony plains between, broken by gorges and fissures in which both wood and water are found. Mount Imaus was, however, a westerly prolongation of the Hindoo Koosh, or, rather, of the Himalaya.

In the latter half of the 4th century before the Christian era Central Asia, as known to the Greeks, was divided into the three provinces of Margiana, Bactria, and Sogdiana. The first corresponds with Khorassan and the south-eastern portion of the Khomat of Khira; the second with Badakhshan; and the