Thriving and independent nations were accordingly scattered on the shores
of the Pacific and the Atlantic. They surrounded the Red Sea, the
Mediterranean, and the Baltic; while, a few tribes excepted, who retire
among the mountains bordering on India and Persia, or who have found some
rude establishment among the creeks and the shores of the Caspian and the
Euxine, there is scarcely a people in the vast continent of Asia who
deserves the name of a nation. The unbounded plain is traversed at large by
hordes, who are in perpetual motion, or who are displaced and harassed by
their mutual hostilities. Although they are never perhaps actually blended
together in the course of hunting, or in the search of pasture, they cannot
bear one great distinction of nations, which is taken from the territory,
and which is deeply impressed by an affection to the native seat. They move
in troops, without the arrangement or the concert of nations; they become
easy accessions to every new empire among themselves, or to the Chinese and
the Muscovite, with whom they hold a traffic for the means of subsistence,
and the materials of pleasure.
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