Into the top of the
heap was thrust an ancient iron sword as the emblem of the god. To this
grim symbol more victims were sacrificed than to all the other deities;
not only cattle and horses, but prisoners taken in battle, of whom one
out of every hundred died to honor the god, their blood being caught in
vessels and poured on the sword.

A people with a worship like this must have been savage in grain. To
prove their prowess in war they cut off the heads of the slain and
carried them to the king. Like the Indians of the West, they scalped
their enemies. These scalps, softened by treatment, they used as napkins
at their meals, and even sewed them together to make cloaks. Here was a
refinement in barbarity undreamed of by the Indians.

These were not their only savage customs. They drank the blood of the
first enemy killed by them in battle, and at their high feasts used
drinking-cups made from the skulls of their foes. When a chief died
cruelty was given free vent. The slaves and horses of the dead chief
were slain at his grave, and placed upright like a circle of horsemen
around the royal tomb, being impaled on sharp timbers to keep them in an
upright position.

Tribes with habits like these have no history. There is nothing in their
careers worth the telling, and no one to tell it if there were. Their
origin, manners, and customs may be of interest, but not their
intertribal quarrels.

Herodotus tells us of others besides the Scythians. There were the
Melanchlainai, who dressed only in black; the Neuri, who once a year
changed into wolves; the Agathyrei, who took pleasure in trinkets of
gold; the Sauromati, children of the Amazons, or women warriors; the
Argippei, bald-headed and snub-nosed from their birth; the Issedones,
who feasted on the dead bodies of their parents; the Arimaspians, a
one-eyed race; the Gryphons, guardians of great hoards of gold; the
Hyperboreans, in whose land white feathers (snow-flakes?) fell all the
year round from the skies.

Such is the mixture of fact and fable which Herodotus learned from the
traders and travellers of Greece. We know nothing of these tribes but
the names. Their ancestors may have dwelt for thousands of years on the
Russian plains; their descendants may still make up part of the great
Russian people and retain some of their old-time habits and customs; but
of their doings history takes no account.

The Scythians, who occupied the south of Russia, came into contact