Take a good map of Asia, one which shows the eastern confines of Europe, and turn your attention to the country now called Joorkistan, lying between the Caspian Sea and the western boundary of the Chinese Empire. There, some five or six thousand years ago, (it will not do to be too particular, all the more because we can not, if we would,) about the foot of the Hindoo Kosh, and around the sources of the Oxus, there lived, we have good reason to believe, a people who called themselves Aryan. They were a white race; much fairer, at least, than the people who were then occupying Europe and the other parts of Asia. They were strong of body, intelligent and enterprising. They did not live only by hunting and herding, like the nomadic peoples, their neighbors, but cultivated the ground. Their name, Aryan, means honorable, noble; and there is some reason for believing that it is connected with their agricultural pursuits and distinction. For reasons which of course we do not know, but probably from the pressure of population, more than four thousand years ago this people began to send out bodies of emigrants. They moved westward, toward the Caspian Sea, of the existence of which they were probably ignorant. They had used boats upon the Oxus, but the history of their language shows that they knew nothing of what we call navigation. Their progress seems to have been slow, but continuous, one body of emigrants being ere long followed by another. We may be sure that they had to fight their way. So late as eight hundred years ago all emigration was armed. The strong took the land red-handed from the weak, or at least from those who were not so strong and so numerous as they were themselves. The Aryans reached the Caspian Sea; and took possession of the country lying south of it, since known as Persia. After a time, we know not how long, emigration began again from this point. But here the advancing people divided. Some of them moved in a south-westerly direction; and this stream of emigration continued until it overflowed all the vast territory now known as Afghanistan, Belochistan and Hindostan. Another stream moved westward and northward, and passed through Turkey in Asia into Europe.