A history of the Highlands and of the Highland clans

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
Notwithstanding the researches of the learned to trace the origin
of nations and the descent and progress of the different brandies of the
great human family, as found at the dawn of history, it must be con-
fessed that the result has been far from satisfactory, and that many of
the systems which have been proposed are built upon the most gratui-
tous and chimerical hypotheses. By a comparison of languages, how-
ever, considerable light has been thrown upon the affinities of nations
but beyond these philological investigations, every thing becomes vague
and uncertain.
Some modern Avriters, particularly amongst the Germans, with that
unfortunate latitudinarianism of interpretation which distinguishes the dis-
ciples of the neologian school, consider the deluge as liaving been confin-
ed to a small portion of the globe ; and upon this gratuitous hypothesis
they have raised the most incongruous systems. Klaproth, although he
very properly disclaims the intention of deriving all languages from one
primitive tongue, nevertheless makes the following extraordinary observa-
tions :
" The wide dispersion of the Indo-Germanic* race took place pro-
bably before the flood of Noah : besides, it is the only Asiatic one which
appears to have descended, after that event, from two high mountains,
namely, from the Himalaya into India and Middle Asia, and on the
west from the Kaukasus into Asia Minor and Europe. In India this
race mixed itself much with the dark-coloured aborigines, and, though
its speech predominated, its physical characteristics were deteriorated,
as has ever been the case when a mixture has taken place between
a white and black, or brown race ; when the physical qualities of the
latter, and the moral qualities of each undergo an inevitable change.
* Indians, Persians, Afglians, Kurds, Medes, Ossetes, Armenians, Sclavonians, Germans,
Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, English, Greeks, Romans, and all the people whc
speak a language derived from Latin, are reckoned by Klaproth as Indo-Germanic.
I. a
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