profeffed hunters or fishers, dwelling on that account in forefts or near great rivers, under huts or rude tents, or in waggons drawn by their cattle from station to ftation; they were dextrous archers, excellent horsemen, bold combatants, appearing often to flee in disorder for the fake of renewing their attack with advantage; drinking the milk of mares, and eating the flesh of colts; and thus in many respects refembling the old Arabs, but in nothing more than in their love of intoxicating liquors, and in nothing less than in a tafte for poetry and the improvement of their language.

Thus has it been proved, and, in my humble opinion, beyond controversy, that the far greater part of Asia has been peopled and immemorially poffeffed by three confiderable nations, whom, for want of better names, we may call Hindus, Arabs, and Tartars; each of them divided and fubdivided into an infinite number of branches, and all of them so different in form and features, language, manners, and religion, that, if they sprang originally from a common root, they must have been separated for ages: whether more than three primitive stocks can be found, or, in other words, whether the Chinese, Japanese, and Perfians, are entirely distinct from them, or formed by their intermixture, I shall hereafter, if your indulgence to me continue, diligently inquire. To what conclufions thefe inquiries will lead, I cannot yet clearly dif cern; but, if they lead to truth, we shall not regret our journey through this dark region of ancient history, in which, while we proceed ftep by step, and follow every glimmering of certain light, that presents itself, we must beware of thofe falfe rays and luminous vapours, which miflead Afiatick travellers by an appearance of water, but are found on a near approach to be deserts of fand.

THE SIXTH

DISCOURSE;

ON THE

PERSIANS,

DELIVERED 19 FEBRUARY, 1789.

GENTLEMEN,

I TURN with delight from the vast mountains and barren deserts of

Túràn, over which we travelled last year with no perfect knowledge of our course, and request you now to accompany me on a literary journey through one of the most celebrated and most beautiful countries in the world; a country, the history and languages of which, both ancient and modern, I have long attentively studied, and on which I may without arrogance promise you more pofitive information, than I could poffibly procure on a nation fo difunited and fo unlettered as the Tartars: I mean that, which Europeans improperly call Perfia, the name of a single province being applied to the whole Empire of Iràn, as it is correctly denominated by the present natives of it, and by all the learned Mufelmans, who refide in these British territories. To give you an idea of its largest boundaries, agreeably to my former mode of defcribing India, Arabia, and Tartary, between which it lies, let us begin

VOL. I.

N

begin with the fource of the great Affyrian ftream, Euphrates, (as the Greeks, according to their cuftom, were pleafed to mifcall the Foràt) and thence defcend to its mouth in the Green Sea, or Perfian Gulf, including in our line fome confiderable diftricts and towns on both fides the river; then coafting Perfia, properly fo named, and other Iranian provinces, we come to the delta of the Sindhu or Indus; whence ascending to the mountains of Cashghar, we discover its fountains and thofe of the Jaibùn, down which we are conducted to the Cafpian, which formerly perhaps it entered, though it lofe itself now in the fands and lakes of Khwárezm: we next are led from the sea of Khozar, by the banks of the Cur, or Cyrus, and along the Caucafean ridges, to the shore of the Euxine, and thence, by the several Grecian seas, to the point, whence we took our departure, at no confiderable diftance from the Mediterranean. We cannot but include the lower Afia within this outline, because it was unquestionably a part of the Persian, if not of the old Affyrian, Empire; for we know, that it was under the dominion of CAIKHOSRAU; and DIODORUS, we find, afferts, that the kingdom of Troas was dependent on Affyria, fince PRIAM implored and obtained fuccours from his Emperor TEUTAMES, whose name approaches nearer to TAHMU'ras, than to that of any other Affyrian monarch. Thus may we look on Iràn as the noblest Island, (for so the Greeks and the Arabs would have called it), or at least as the nobleft peninfula, on this habitable globe; and if M. BAILLY had fixed on it as the Atlantis of PLATO, he might have supported his opinion with far stronger arguments than any, that he has adduced in favour of New Zembla: if the account, indeed, of the Atlantes be not purely an Egyptian, or an Utopian, fable, I should be more inclined to place them in Iràn than in any region, with which I am acquainted.

It

may seem strange, that the ancient history of so distinguished an Empire fhould be yet fo imperfectly known; but very fatisfactory

reafons

reasons may be affigned for our ignorance of it: the principal of them are the fuperficial knowledge of the Greeks and fews, and the lofs of Perfian archives or historical compofitions. That the Grecian writers, before XENOPHON, had no acquaintance with Perfia, and that all their accounts of it are wholly fabulous, is a paradox too extravagant to be seriously maintained; but their connection with it in war or peace had, indeed, been generally confined to bordering kingdoms under feudatory princes; and the first Perfian Emperor, whofe life and character they seem to have known with tolerable accuracy, was the great CYRUS, whom I call, without fear of contradiction, CAIKHOSRAU; for I fhall then only doubt that the KHOSRAU of FIRDAUSI' was the CYRUS of the firft Greek hiftorian, and the Hero of the oldest political and moral romance, when I doubt that Louis Quatorze and LEWIS the Fourteenth were one and the fame French King: it is utterly incredible, that two different princes of Perfia fhould each have been born in a foreign and hostile territory; should each have been doomed to death in his infancy by his maternal grandfather in consequence of portentous dreams, real or invented; should each have been saved by the remorse of his destined murderer, and should each, after a similar education among herdímen, as the fon of a herdsman, have found means to revifit his paternal kingdom, and having delivered it, after a long and triumphant war, from the tyrant, who had invaded it, should have restored it to the fummit of power and magnificence. Whether fo romantick a ftory, which is the fubject of an Epick Poem, as majestick and entire as the Iliad, be historically true, we may feel perhaps an inclination to doubt; but it cannot with reafon be denied, that the outline of it related to a fingle Hero, whom the Afiaticks, converfing with the father of European hiftory, defcribed according to their popular traditions by his true name, which the Greek alphabet could not express: nor will a difference of names affect the question; fince the Greeks had little regard for truth, which they facrificed will