The wide extent of steppe eastward and north-eastward of the Tanais, between the Ural mountains and the Caspian, and beyond the possessions of the Sarmatians, was traversed by Grecian traders, even to a good distance in the direction of the Altai mountains,—the rich produce of gold, both in Altai and Ural, being the great temptation. First, according to Herodotus, came the indigenous nomadic nation called Budini, who dwelt to the northward of the Sarmatians,[466] and among whom were established a colony of Pontic Greeks, intermixed with natives, and called Gelôni; these latter inhabited a spacious town built entirely of wood. Beyond the Budini eastward dwelt the Thyssagetæ and the Jurkæ, tribes of hunters, and even a body of Scythians who had migrated from the territories of the regal Scythians. The Issêdones were the easternmost people respecting whom any definite information reached the Greeks; beyond them we find nothing but fable,[467]—the one-eyed Arimaspians, the gold-guarding Grypes, or Griffins, and the bald-headed Argippæi. It is impossible to fix with precision the geography of these different tribes, or to do more than comprehend approximatively their local bearings and relations to each other. [466] The locality which Herodotus assigns to the Budini creates difficulty. According to his own statement, it would seem that they ought to be near to the Neuri (iv, 105), and so in fact Ptolemy places them (v, 9) near about Volhynia and the sources of the Dniester. Mannert (Geographie der Griech. und Römer, Der Norden der Erde, v, iv, p. 138) conceives the Budini to be a Teutonic tribe; but Paul Joseph Schafarik (Slavische Alterthümer, i, 10, pp. 185-195) has shown more plausible grounds for believing both them and the Neuri to be of Slavic family. It seems that the names Budini and Neuri are traceable to Slavic roots; that the wooden town described by Herodotus in the midst of the Budini is an exact parallel of the primitive Slavic towns, down even to the twelfth century; and that the description of the country around, with its woods and marshes containing beavers, otters, etc. harmonizes better with southern Poland and Russia than with the neighborhood of the Ural mountains. From the color ascribed to the Budini, no certain inference can be drawn: γλαυκόν τε πᾶν ἰσχυρῶς ἐστὶ καὶ πυῤῥόν (iv, 108). Mannert construes it in favor of Teutonic family, Schafarik in favor of Slavic; and it is to be remarked, that Hippokratês talks of the Scythians generally as extremely πυῤῥοί (De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, c. vi: compare Aristot. Prob. xxxviii, 2).