colonists, Herodotus, who wrote about four hundred and forty years
before Christ, gives some information respecting the then condition of
interior Russia. The first great irruption into the wastes of Russia,
of which history gives us any record, was about one hundred years
before our Saviour. An immense multitude of conglomerated tribes,
taking the general name of Scythians, with their wives and their
children, their flocks and their herds, and their warriors, fiercer
than wolves, crossed the Volga, and took possession of the whole
country between the Don and the Danube. These barbarians did not
molest the Greek colonies, but, on the contrary, were glad to learn of
them many of the rudiments of civilization. Some of these tribes
retained their ancestral habits of wandering herdsmen, and, with their
flocks, traversed the vast and treeless plains, where they found ample
pasture. Others selecting sunny and fertile valleys, scattered their
seed and cultivated the soil. Thus the Scythians were divided into two
quite distinct classes, the herdsmen and the laborers.

The tribes who then peopled the vast wilds of northern Europe and
Asia, though almost innumerable, and of different languages and
customs, were all called, by the Greeks, Scythians, as we have given
the general name of Indians to all the tribes who formerly ranged the
forests of North America. The Scythians were as ferocious a race as
earth has ever known. They drank the blood of their enemies; tanned
their skins for garments; used their skulls for drinking cups; and
worshiped a sword as the image or emblem of their favorite deity, the
God of War. Philip of Macedon was the first who put any check upon
their proud spirit. He conquered them in a decisive battle, and thus
taught them that they were not invincible. Alexander the Great
assailed them and spread the terror of his arms throughout all the
region between the Danube and the Dnieper. Subsequently the Roman