ABSTRACT
EVEN nations settle and migrate, come and go, arise and disappear again. It is seldom that the places they lived in, and the routes they took in their wanderings in the dim and distant past, are recognizable in the clear light of history. The student of history is forced to fall back upon suppositions founded on deficient tradition and obscure legends. There are certainly no written records available to him. He must look back along the thousands of years that are past for other evidence. Every reminder arising from sound or stone, insignificant though it may be, is of value to him. Every trace of the creative human hand serves as a pointer to him. It is to language that attention must specially be paid. Speech is an ancient inheritance moulded by past generations. Every considerable change in the universe has left clearly recognizable traces behind. Through the contact of one race with another, foreign sounds creep in and foreign words are borrowed. They enable conclusions to be drawn regarding the relationships and connexions between peoples, which have long disappeared. Myth and saga, proverb and song, philosophy of religion and life, custom and law, dwelling and manner of living, weapons and utensils, family control and tribal divisions, and many other things have to serve as sources, from which the drops which often drip so meagrely must be collected so as to form the streamlet of a history, which bears but little resemblablance to the clear mountain stream hurrying in its busy course to join the broad river of the history of the human race. When he correlates his work scientifically the historian finds perhaps that one of his sources lies upon a watershed; technically it should have taken a northerly course, while nature has given it a southerly one. As his eyes become sharper he learns to view old discoveries in a new light, while new ones cannot be brought into the preconceived line. Finally, there dawns upon him the conviction that, before the race in which he is interested and to which he was prepared to award the birthright of the first-born, there existed in the dim past another race, regarding which nothing more can be said than that it actually existed.
