conducting any distant expedition.
Like their modern successors, the Circassians, Abassians, and Lesghians,
their one and only desire was to maintain themselves in possession of
their beloved mountains; and this desire would cause them to resist
all attempts that might be made to traverse their country, whether
proceeding from the north or from the south, from the inhabitants of
Europe or from those of Asia. Persia was thus strongly protected in this
quarter; but still she could not feel herself altogether safe. Once at
least within historic memory the barrier of the Caucasus had proved to
be surmountable. From the vast Steppe which stretches northwards from
its base, in part salt, in part grassy, had crossed into Asia--through
its passes or round its eastern flank--a countless host, which had swept
all before it, and brought ruin upon flourishing empires. The Scythian
and Samaritan hordes of the steppe-country between the Wolga and
the Dnieper were to the monarchies of Western Asia a permanent, if a
somewhat distant, peril. It could not be forgotten that they had
proved themselves capable of penetrating the rocky barrier which would
otherwise have seemed so sure a protection, or that when they swarmed
across it in the seventh century before our era, their strength was at
first irresistible. The Persians knew, what the great nations of the
earth afterwards forgot, that along the northern horizon there lay a
black cloud, which might at any time burst, carrying desolation to
their homes and bringing ruin upon their civilization. We shall find the
course of their history importantly affected by a sense of this danger,
and we shall have reason to admire the wisdom of their measures of
precaution against it.

It was not only to the west of the Caspian that the danger threatened.
East of that sea also was a vast steppe-region--rolling plains of sand
or grass--the home of nomadic hordes similar in character to those who
drank the waters of the Don and Wolga. The Sacse, Massagetse, and Dahse
of this country, who dwelt about the Caspian, the Aral, and the Lower
Jaxartes, were an enemy scarcely less formidable than the Sarmatians
and the Scyths of the West. As the modern Iran now suffers from the
perpetual incursions of Uzbegs and Turcomans, so the north-eastern
provinces of the ancient Persia were exposed to the raids of the Asiatic
Scythians and the Massagetse, who were confined by no such barrier as
the Caucasus, having merely