THE FIFTH

ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE,

DELIVERED 21 FEBRUARY, 1788.

BY

THE PRESIDENT.

AT the clofe of my laft addrefs to you, Gentlemen, I declared my design of introducing to your notice a people of Afia, who seemed as different in most respects from the Hindus and Arabs, as thofe two nations had been fhown to differ from each other; I meaned the people, whom we call Tartars: but I enter with extreme diffidence on my prefent fubject, because I have little knowledge of the Tartarian dialects; and the grofs errours of European writers on Afiatick literature have long convinced me, that no fatisfactory account can be given of any nation, with whose language we are not perfectly acquainted. Such evidence, however, as I have procured by attentive reading and fcrupulous inquiries, I will now lay before you, interfperfing fuch remarks as I could not but make on that

evidence, and submitting the whole to your im partial decifion.

Conformably to the method before adopted in defcribing Arabia and India, I confider Tartary also, for the purpose of this discourse, on its most extensive scale, and request your attention, whilst I trace the largest boundaries that are affignable to it: conceive a line drawn from the mouth of the Oby to that of the Dnieper, and, bringing it back eastward across the Euxine, fo as to include the peninsula of Krim, extend it along the foot of Caucafus, by the rivers Cur and Aras, to the Cafpian lake, from the opposite shore of which follow the course of the Jaibun' and the chain of Caucafean hills as far as those of Imaus: whence continue the line beyond the Chinese wall to the White Mountain and the country of Yetfo; skirting the borders of Perfia, India, China, Corea, but including part of Ruffia, with all the districts which lie between the Glacial fea, and that of Japan. M. DE GUIGNES, whofe great work on the Huns abounds more in folid learning than in rhetorical ornaments, prefents us, however, with a magnificent image of this wide region; defcribing it as a stupendous edifice, the beams and pillars of which are many ranges of lofty hills, and the dome, one prodigious mountain, to which the Chinese give the epithet of Celestial, with a confiderable number

of broad rivers flowing down its fides: if the mansion be so amazingly fublime, the land around it is proportionably extended, but more wonderfully diversified; for some parts of it are incrufted with ice, others parched with inflamed air and covered with a kind of lava; here we meet with immense tracts of fandy deserts and forests almost impenetrable; there, with gardens, groves, and meadows, perfumed with mufk, watered by numberless rivulets, and abounding in fruits and flowers; and, from east to west, lie many confiderable provinces, which appear as valleys in comparison of the hills towering above them, but in truth are the flat fummits of the highest mountains in the world, or at least the highest in Afia. Near one fourth in latitude of this extraordinary region is in the fame charming climate with Greece, Italy, and Provence ; and another fourth in that of England, Germany, and the northern parts of France; but the Hyperborean countries can have few beauties. to recommend them, at least in the present state of the earth's temperature: to the south, on the frontiers of Iràn are the beautiful vales of Soghd with the celebrated cities of Samarkand and Bokbárà; on those of Tibet are the territories of Cafhgbar, Khoten, Chegil and Khátà, all famed for perfumes and for the beauty of their inhabitants; and on thofe of China lies the coun

try of Chin, anciently a powerful kingdom, which name, like that of Khátà, has in modern times been given to the whole Chinefe empire, where fuch an appellation would be thought an infult. We must not omit the fine territory of Tancut, which was known to the Greeks by the name of Serica, and confidered by them as the fartheft eastern extremity of the habitable globe.

Scythia feems to be the general name, which the ancient Europeans gave to as much as they knew of the country thus bounded and defcribed; but, whether that word be derived, as PLINY feems to intimate, from Sacai, a people known by a fimilar name to the Greeks and Perfians, or, as BRYANT imagines, from Cuthia, or, as Colonel VALLANCEY believes, from words denoting navigation, or, as it might have been fuppofed, from a Greek root implying wrath and ferocity, this at leaft is certain, that as India, China, Perfia, Japan, are not appella tions of thofe countries in the languages of the nations, who inhabit them, fo neither Scythia nor Tartary are names, by which the inhabitants of the country now under our confideration have ever diftinguished themselves. Tátáristan is, indeed, a word used by the Perfians for the south-western part of Scythia, where the mufk-deer is faid to be common; and the name Tátar is by fome confidered as that of a parti

cular tribe; by others, as that of a small river only; while Túràn, as opposed to Iran, feems to mean the ancient dominion of AFRA'SIA B to the north and eaft of the Oxus. There is nothing more idle than a debate concerning names, which after all are of little confequence, when our ideas are diftinct without them: having given, therefore, a correct notion of the country, which I proposed to examine, I shall not scruple to call it by the general name of Tartary; though I am conscious of using a term equally improper in the pronunciation and the application of it.

Tartary then, which contained, according to PLINY, an innumerable multitude of nations, by whom the rest of Afia and all Europe has in different ages been over-run, is denominated, as various images have presented themselves to various fancies, the great hive of the northern fwarms, the nursery of irrefiftible legions, and, by a stronger metaphor, the foundery of the buman race; but M. BAILLY, a wonderfully ingenious man and a very lively writer, feems first to have confidered it as the cradle of our fpecies, and to have fupported an opinion, that the whole ancient world was enlightened by fciences brought from the most northern parts of Scythia, particularly from the banks of the Jenifea, or from the Hyperborean regions: all