in the physical geography of the countries. Of the rivers of European Russia, some flow northwards into the Baltic and the White Sea, others towards the Euxine and the Caspian. A ridge of highlands may be traced through the whole extent of this country from east to west, which divides the sources of the northern and southern waters. From the heights of Waldai to the south-eastward of old Nowgorod and the country surrounding the sources of the Wolga, this ridge, termed by the Russians Uwal and the Great Uwalli, extends with irregular bendings towards the east. Passing by the great lake of Bieloi Ozero, it continues between Kostroma to the north, and Vologda and Jaroslawi to the south, divides the domain of the Dwina from that of the Upper Wolga, and ascends towards the Ural between the sources of the Petschora and the Kama. The great Uwalli, running nearly under the sixtieth parallel of latitude, may be said to separate Eastern Europe into two great regions, of different climate and natural productions, one of which communicates by its rivers with the Frozen Ocean, and the other with the Pontic and Caspian Seas. These regions to the southward and northward of the Uwalli present striking differences of vegetation. The oak, the great ornament of the German forests, is confined in the east of Europe to the countries lying to the southward of the heights of Waldai; and the principal elms, Ulmus sativa and campestris, are scarcely seen to the northward of this ridge. Of the cereal gramina, rye and barley alone grow to the northward; while wheat and oats are native in the regions lying to the southward of the same limit, where the plains, watered by the Wolga and the Dnieper, abounding in rich corn-fields, have been the granary of Europe. The countries thus physically distinguished present a line of separation important in an ethnological point of view. To the northward of this limit we may place the Finningia, and to the southward the Sarmatia of the Roman writers: the former the immemorial abode of Finnish and Tschudish nations, the latter occupied by tribes of Antes, Serbes, and others, whose lineage is scarcely distinguishable in the middle ages. The relation of the great Sarmatian race living further towards the south

• Müller, Ugrische Volkstamm, b. i.

with the Slavonians, who in the time of Nestor divided European Russia with the Tschudes, is still a subject of some doubt. In the age of that historian there were still Tschudish tribes to the southward of Lake Ilmen, and they continued to be spread far along the steppes of the Wolga towards the south-east, but the Slavic founders of Nowgorod encroached upon them. They still preserve their language and manners in the mountainous parts of the Uwalli. Upon or beyond the Uwalli were, according to the most accurate researches of the academicians of St. Petersburg, the tracts occupied by the various tribes enumerated by Nestor in his Russian annals, as forming, in conjunction with the Slavonic Russians, the population of Eastern Europe. Those tribes in Nestor's table of nations are the Tschudes properly so termed, and the tribes called Meres and Wesses, on the Bieloi Ozero; the Tschudi Savolotschïe or the Tschudes beyond the river Wolok; the Permians, the Petscheres on the Petschora, the James, and the Ougres. The Tschudes of the Baltic or the Pomorskaia Tschudes, the Finns of the Northmen, are here distinguished from the Tschudes beyond the Wolok, who, according to the old Russian historian Tatistschew, occupied the shores of the Ladoga and Onega Lakes. The Petscheres are supposed to be the Syrjæni, on the river Petschora, an active tribe who at an early period carried on a trade in peltry with the people of Siberia; and the Ougres were the natives of Ugria or Yugoria, the limits of which comprehended the Uralian mountains and the country bordering them on both sides.

Even beyond this chain and the rivers which flow from it, the Tschudes, as they are termed by the Russians, are supposed to have extended in ancient times, and to have been spread into the vast regions of Northern Asia.

Since the era of Pallas's journey through various provinces of the Russian empire, and the publication of the Petropolitan vocabularies, many of the academicians of St. Petersburg and other learned men in the north of Europe, have taken much pains in collecting specimens of the languages of the different nations of Siberia; and M. Klaproth in his "Sprachatlas" has collected these vocabularies in tables so comprehensive as to afford a secure ground for the classification of the languages to which they

belong. From the table of vocabularies exemplifying the idioms of the Finns and Tschudes, we perceive at the first glance that these languages, and the nations by whom they are spoken, arrange themselves under the following divisions:

1. The western branch, including the tribes and languages of the Iotuns or Finns and Lappes. They are termed sometimes, less properly, Finns of the Baltic, and by Klaproth Germanised Finns.

To this branch belong the Finnlanders already mentioned; the Ehstians or Esthonians, separated from the Finnlanders by the gulf which bears the name of the latter people; the Karelians, to the eastward of Finnland reaching to lake Ladoga; the Finns of Olonetz, to the northward of lake Onega, and spreading towards the Dwina; and the Lappes, whether natives of Norwegian Finnmark, where they are still termed Finnas, or of Swedish and Russian Lapland.

2. The second branch are the Permian tribes. To the Permian branch belong the inhabitants of various districts on the Upper Kama, the Russian province of Permia, the Syrjænians, and the Votiaks. The old Biarmi of the Sagas on the Dwina, and reaching from the mouth of that river to the Petschore, along the coast of the White Sea, who were the Beorinahs of Ottar, were of this stock, as nearly all the northern writers since the time of Strahlenberg have maintained.

3. A third branch may be termed the Bulgarian, since according to the researches of late writers they are relics of the old population of Great Bulgaria, under which name were comprehended the countries on the Wolga and the Lower Kama, and the plains reaching thence towards the Pontic and Caspian Seas. The tribes of this division, who by Klaproth are termed "Wolgische Finnen" or Wolgian Finns, will be described in the sequel; they are principally the Morduans and Tscheremisses. Some reckon among them the Tschuvasches.

4. The fourth branch are the Ugorian races, the Ougres or Ugrian tribes, termed by Klaproth "die Ugorische Finnen." A learned writer, who has lately investigated the history of these nations in a work of great research, denominates the whole race from this branch, "Der Ugrische Volk

stamm." If we consider the name of this branch in its local relation merely, it will be nearly equivalent to Uralian.

Among the Ugorian tribes are enumerated:-1. The Wogouls of the Uralian mountain-chain, whose language displays four dialects, indicative of so many tribes. 2. Various tribes of Ostiaks, inhabiting the neighbourhood of the river Obi. 3. The Magyars or Hungarians, who settled in the ninth century in Hungary, but are proved by historical evidence, and principally by the analogy of their language, to be a tribe of this race, and to have belonged to the Ugorian division of it.

I shall now proceed to examine the history of particular nations falling under each of these subdivisions. It may be observed, for the purpose of a more distinct terminology, that the name of Iotuns or Iotnen, comprehends properly the Western Finns, Esthonians, and Lappes; that of Tschudes, the tribes of middle Russia, both on the Wolga and in Permland; Ougres or Ugorian tribes are those of the Ural and Siberia. Each of these names has by some writers been generalised, and made by them to comprehend the whole stock.

SECTION III. Of the Iotuns or Iotnen, including Finnas or Lappes, Finns, Ehstians, and Liefi or Livonians.

It is remarkable that the Lappes were known for many ages under no other designation than that of Finnas or Skrithfinnas, a fact calculated to throw doubt on the derivation of the name of Finns adopted by Ihre and later writers. The Lappes are termed by their Russian neighbours Lopari: tribes belonging to this division of the Iotune race are distinguished by their wilder and more nomadic manner of life, and still more by their dialects, which though related to those of the Finns are yet separate idioms, and unintelligible in conversation to Finns who live at a distance from the Lappes. The language of the Finns, properly so termed, is much more nearly related to the Ehstian or Esthonian, and to the Liefian or Livonian, and the people who speak these three dialects are similar in their manners. In the time of Pliny the southern

coast of the Baltic to the eastward of the Vistula was vaguely termed Finningia, from the Finnish tribes who inhabited it. Pliny gives it that name, but enumerates among its inhabitants German and perhaps some Slavonian tribes, extending from the Vistula towards the remote East.*

Ptolemy in the second century mentioned Phinni, together with the Gythones and Venedæ, nations of small extent and power in the neighbourhood of the Vistula.†

Tacitus at an earlier period had more accurately described the Finns, evidently inhabitants of countries to the southward of the Baltic.

How far the Finnish races may originally have extended from this quarter towards the south and west is uncertain. Is is very probable that in ages anterior to the conquest of Germany by the Teutonic race they may have occupied all the southern coast of the Baltic, and they may have come into contact with the Celtic nation in the neighbourhood of the Cimbric territory. They appear, according to Geijer, from ancient accounts, to have spread themselves at least into the islands of the Baltic adjacent to the coast of Denmark.+

The Finnish tribes to the southward of the gulf of Finnland are the Ehstians and Liefi or Livonians. They are chiefly in Esthonia, Russia, and on the coast of the gulf of Livonia, where they live both about Salis on the eastern, and about Angern on the western shore of the great Livonian bay or gulf. Courland is the most western country now containing distinct remains of the old Finnish population. At Walk, one hundred and forty wersts east from Riga, the Esthonian Finnish takes place of the Lettish or Lithuanian idiom among the peasantry. "Here," says the intelligent traveller M. Erman "is the clearly-marked boundary of the Hunno-Finnish race,

Nec minor est opinione Finningia. Quidam hæc habitari ad Vistulum usque fluvium à Garmatis, Venedis, &c., ferunt.

+ Claud. Ptolem. Geogr. p. 73.

See the account of the Iotun Aeger or Hler, in the isle of Lessoë, near Denmark. Lessoë means Hler's Oe or Hler's island. Geijer, ubi supra, p. 346. See also Konung Olaf Helges Haraldson's Saga. Heimskringla, apud Periugskiöld, tom. i. p. 647.