Their numerous tribes, however distant or adverse, used one common language, (it was harsh and irregular,) and where known by the resemblance of their form, which deviated from the swarthy Tartar, and approached without attaining the lofty stature and fair complexion of the German.

Four thousand six hundred villages [13] were scattered over the provinces of Russia and Poland, and their huts were hastily built of rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron.

Erected, or rather concealed, in the depth of forests, on the banks of rivers, or the edges of morasses, we may not perhaps, without flattery, compare them to the architecture of the beaver; which they resembled in a double issue, to the land and water, for the escape of the savage inhabitant, an animal less cleanly, less diligent, and less social, than that marvellous quadruped.

The fertility of the soil, rather than the labor of the natives, supplied the rustic plenty of the Sclavonians.

Their sheep and horned cattle were large and numerous, and the fields which they sowed with millet or panic [14] afforded, in place of bread, a coarse and less nutritive food.