Wherever the Baltic people hold their conquests in Asia, Europe, or America, a nation arises of mixed blood from their marriages with black-haired natives or fellow emigrants. A few centuries after the settlement, four hundred years or so, the austere republic, or monarchy of free men with a king as Leader, blossoms into a grand empire, ablaze with genius, rich, corrupt, decaying. But, if the Baltic colonists have settled to sunward of the 49th parallel, the sunlight begins to affect the nerves of the blonde emigrants, to weaken the children, to give a feverish energy to business, to kill off the unsheltered outdoor workers, and emasculate the sheltered aristocracy. A few centuries later the dark-haired natives of the region have time once more to resume their ancient habit of sitting in the sun. They made the statues and portraits of fair gods and saints, blonde kings and heroes. "Once upon a time," they say, "we had Olympic games. Our cavalry were irresistible. We ruled the entire world!" But the race of the blonde conquerors has perished from among them, gone like last winter's snow save for a few surviving aristocrats, and some poor melting drifts of peasantry up in the {115} mountain valleys where there are clouds for shelter. [Sidenote: Hellenic horsemen] THE HELLENIC HORSEMEN. While the Baltic region itself was still sub-arctic, perhaps with no horse-stock as yet much better than Celtic ponies, the oak woods of the Danube valley were breeding sturdy Dapples, while the Tartar hordes with each invasion scattered Duns as far as central France. Even the white horse of the Southern steppes, rare and held sacred by the Northern people, was known in Central Europe. So when the fair Achaeans came to Greece they brought not Celtic ponies but Duns, and a few Dapples picked up upon their journeys. In the sagas of the Northmen, as in the legends of Achaean Greece the blue-eyed, ruddy, tawny hero makes love or war to worship a fair woman. The vein is epic, but there is a difference of mood; for in the North its atmosphere is one of gloom and terror shadowed by awful Fate, but in the south of sunny splendour, gallantry, and joy. The theme of the winged horse has its weird Valkyrs riding to find the slain through battlefields at night, and its gay flying Pegasus in the Sahara, who will not be caught save with a golden bridle made by magic. {116} [Sidenote: Achaean horsemen]