scendants early became distinguished for painting, carving and the cultivation of silk.1

But we are more likely to solve this curious question by tracing this very ancient word to some epithet derived from a characteristic product of its soil or manufacture, just as Britain meant the "land of tin;" Brazil, the country of a certain crimson dye-wood; and Palmyra or Tadmor, the land of the palm and its products. The writer, after a thorough investigation of the subject during more than twenty years, has been led to the conclusion, which he has seen nowhere else mentioned, that the word Sin or Tsin was probably taken from a Chinese word signifying the silkworm. In the Shu-king, the most ancient historical work of China now existing, compiled by Confucius from the primeval traditions and writings remaining in his time, the silkworm is designated tsan. The emperor Ta-yu, who began to reign B. C. 2205, is said to have selected land suitable for the cultivation of the mulberry, collected silkworms and induced many people who lived among the mountains to come down and occupy the plains. This manufacture and trade in silk became at a very early period the most marked characteristic of the nation upon the Yellow river. The Shu-king describes the commerce which sprang up with their neighbors in furs, metals, precious. stones, silk, hemp, cotton, products of the forests and ivory. The word Tsan seems to have been the source of the name Tsin or Chin or Sin, by which these people were distinguished in the languages of most of the nations of Asia. There is another ancient name given to them, which we find in the Greek-the "Seres."

1 D'HERBELOT, Bibliothèque Orientale; tom. iii. art. "Sin." • Book ii.

It

occurs once in the New Testament in the adjective form, serikos (Rev. xviii. 12), which no doubt has given to us the word silk. The root, it has been supposed, no doubt correctly, is from the Chinese sze, which means the silk fibre or thread. This was in that luxurious age imported from China and sold at its weight in gold to the wealthy Romans.

While the first Chinese families crossed the deserts of the North and slowly moved down the valleys tributary to the Hwang-ho, we trace a corresponding eastward progress of another people as early, if not earlier, to the southward of them.

It is a fact upon which a clear light is now thrown by the investigations of the languages, history, customs and religious ideas of many tribes of the more remote and more mountainous portions of Central, Eastern and Southern Asia, that another of the fragments of the explosion at Babel was cast in a more southerly direction, and dissolved upon the highlands of Northern India. Some of the ancient legends of Persia assert that Tsin, or Gin, was not the eldest son of Japhet, but that older than he was another, named Turk, who gave his name to the countless and widely-dispersed Turanian or Turkish tribes. In the Sanskrit of India also is found the name Turushka, applied to the same race. They were followed by the Aryans, who pushed them to the extremities of the great peninsulas, to the large islands upon the coast of Asia, up into the mountainous tracts, and out into the deserts. In India they thus became the progenitors of the hill-tribes of the central parts, the Coles, the Bhils, the Waralis, and others as impoverished, degraded and distinct from the more powerful races that have rolled

over the land in successive waves. They are the Tamul people of the South, whose language is largely overlaid by the Sanskrit. They occupy portions of the island of Ceylon, under the name of the Vaidas. In the mountains of Asam they are the Meris and Abors. They are the Kambojans and Peguans, or Mons, of the ultraGanges peninsula. They give to the Malays the character of their language. They form the great tribes of the Kalmuks, the Mongols, the Ugrians or Uigurs, the Manchus, the Si-fans and people of Tibet. The language of the Japanese I have found to be one-half so like to the dialects of the neighboring coast of China that so far it might well be considered Chinese, but the other part carries us back to their own Turanian source. It is polysyllabic, and is written with an alphabetic character which has been derived from some of their Tartar cousins. But the most curious part of the history of this Turanian family, with which the "hill-tribes" of Eastern Asia appear to be connected, is, that in the far Northeast it has begotten the Yakuts and other savage nations, some members of which are found in Asia, others a thousand miles distant, on the Youcon river, which rolls its mighty tide, the rival of the Mackenzie, across thirty degrees of longitude, and falls into the Sea of Kamschatka, within our new Territory of Alaska.

The Aryans, who, as has been said, pressed forward the Turanians, and occupied the best lands of Southern Asia, and who gave us the inexhaustible literature of the Sanskrit, sent members of their race into the West. They are the Indo-European family to which we belong. The word "Ire-land" probably retains the ancient name as to its people. And there is seen here in the Indian wars

of the New World, after a lapse of more than three thousand years, the renewal of the same transactions which occurred in Central Asia-the descendants of the more civilized Aryan race dispossessing and exterminating those of the earlier and barbarous Turanian.

The hill-tribes of China are denominated in that language the Miau-tsz, a name taken from buds in spring, and signifies that they were the first inhabitants of the central and western provinces in which they are found. They are noticed in the most ancient records of Chinese history. The Shu-king states that about the years 2286 to 2258 B.C. the emperor Shun made war upon three tribes of the Miau-tsz, who dwelt south of the Yang-tszkiang river, and drove them to the West. In the reign of Ta-yu, which dates from 2204 B.C., the war was renewed, and continued at intervals for seventy years.

It will gratify the interest in this people to further remark that these "aborigines" of Central China yet occupy its mountain districts. They are divided into small tribes, which are, many of them, so entrenched in inaccessible and wild mountains as to be entirely independent of the Chinese government. They generally choose their own chiefs, and are allowed to manage most of their local affairs. They follow in some regions agricultural pursuits, but in others abandon themselves to hunting and fishing. It is remarkable that some of them are called the Blacksnakes, the Crows, the Blackfeet, and other names which remind us of our Indians, and that the men often ornament themselves, like them, with a plume in the hair. The women cultivate and spin silk, dress neatly in short gowns, tying their wide pantaloons, like the Persians, about the ankles, and are

fond of silver and copper trinkets. Their houses are partially excavated in the mountain sides, or in the forests are framed of bamboo among the branches of spreading trees. Their language is said by the Chinese to be wholly different from their own. A few of them have visited Canton and other ports open to foreigners, but I am not aware of any successful attempt to obtain a vocabulary of it. Many of them read and talk the Chinese language. They have not yielded to the Buddhist proselytes who have swept the Chinese into that superstition. Their religion is simple. They believe in lucky and unlucky times, celebrate the New Year and other festivals, and live in great terror of evil spirits. They sacrifice the dog and other animals. The worship which has the strongest hold upon them is that of the spirits of their deceased kindred. They suppose these remain with the corporeal parts. They therefore sometimes do not bury the body for twenty years, and then carry a number of the corpses together out to the place of interment with great parade. A man revenges himself upon an enemy by tearing up or destroying the tombs of his kindred, or secures payment from a debtor by stealing their bones and keeping them. They seek to obtain the relief of one who is sick by sacrifices before the remains of an ancestor, and perhaps by cleansing and washing the bones. This notice of them will suggest many points of resemblance to the Indian tribes of our own continent, whose condition in history seems so strangely parallel and interlinked with theirs.1

1 It should be remarked here that the Indians of the New World have sprung from several sources. In the East there were, beyond reasonable doubt, some who, from the tenth century and later, were descended from small colonies of Northmen, who coasted the irregular shore of the Atlantic from the frozen