This embassy is ascertained to have taken place B.C. 600; and from what shall be elsewhere said of the “island of the Hyperboreans”--coupled with the circumstance of the orator Himerius having called this individual a Scythian, which Strabo would seem to have insinuated also--we can be at no loss in tracing him to his proper home. “Far westward lies an isle of ancient fame, By nature blessed, and Scotia is her name; An island rich--exhaustless in her store Of veiny silver and of golden ore; Her verdant fields with milk and honey flow, Her woolly fleeces vie with virgin snow, Her waving furrows float with verdant corn, And _Arms_ and _Arts_ her envied sons adorn.” Such is the description of Ireland given by Donatus, bishop of Etruria, in 802; and I have selected it among a thousand other authorities of similar import, to show that Scotia or Scythia was one, and the _last_, of the _ancient_ names of this country;[70] while the name of “Hyperborean” was the distinctive character assigned thereto, not only as descriptive of its locality towards the north, but as worshipping the wind Boreas. Did I not apprehend it might be considered irrelevant to the scope of this work, I could easily prove that the amity, said by Hecatæus to have been cemented on the occasion of the visit above alluded to, was not that of a mere return of courteous civilities for a casual intercourse, but one of a far more tender and _familiar_ nature, viz. the recognition on both sides of their mutual descent from one common origin: the same people who had settled in this country, and imported the mysteries of their magic priesthood, being akin to the first settlers on the coasts of Greece, which they impregnated with similar initiation. I am anticipated, of course, to have meant the Pelasgi, who, under another name, belonged to the same hive as the Indo-Scythæ, or Chaldean Magi, or Tuath-de-danaan,--_as the head tribe thereof were called_,--who, having effected an establishment on _this_ happy isle, aloof from the intrusion of external invasion or internal butcheries, were allowed to cultivate the _study_ of their _favourite rites_, the fame and eminence of which had obtained for its theatre, of all nations, the designation of “sacred.” But I fear it would be encroaching upon the patience of my readers, and besides anticipating, in point of order, what may by and by follow. An inconsistency, however, appears in the details, which I cannot here well overlook. It is this. Himerius has called this our ambassador a “Scythian”; and Strabo has affirmed, that he was “not clad like a Scythian.” How, then, shall I cut this knot? Thus. Abaris, as his name implies, was one of the Boreades, or priests of Boreas, belonging to the Tuath-de-danaan colony in this island, who were subdued about six hundred years before this event by the Scythians, whose dress, as well as manners, differed in all particulars from those of their religious and learned predecessors.