Salust, in his Jugurthine war, gives us a very luminous view of the geography of Africa, and of its various nations, as far as both were known in his day; and he places Ethiopia next to "loca exusta solis ardoribus," or the countries burnt up by the heat of the torrid zone. This same valuable historian, in a fragment which has been preserved, tells us, "that the Moors, a vain and faithless people, as all Africans are, would make us believe, that, beyond Ethiopia, there is an antipodes, a just and amiable people, the manners and customs of which resemble those of the Persians."

We shall have occasion, in the next chapter, to notice some customs amongst the Africans of the interior, which are evidently derived from their Asiatic progenitors.

"The banks of the river, at Beer, are steep on both sides, and of a CHALKY SOIL. "There are many perpendicular cliffs within and around it, in different directions; in these are many large caves, and smaller grottoes. They are of a hard CHALKY substance, and the cavities have furnished the materials for the building of the town.* The whole presents a mass of glaring white, which is painful to look upon in the sun."

66

we

After leaving Beer, and on his way to Orfah, over a very flat and desert country. Mr. Buckingham proceeds; were now come into a more uneven country than before; the height of many of the eminences gave them the character of hills; and they were, throughout, formed of lime-stone rock, of a rounded surface, and, generally, barren. In the valleys were some few patches of cultivated ground, but the rest was covered with a long wild grass.' We have here, again, on these extensive plains, all the outward form and charac

"Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite.”— Nahum iii. 8 and 9.

Moses, also, when residing in Egypt, had married an Ethiopian

woman.

"He shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps."-Daniel xi. 42; see also the whole of the 20th chapter of Isaiah. Besides these, many distinct instances might be quoted, to show that Ethiopia is never alluded to in Scripture, but with reference to a province of Africa; and, consequently, that there could be no possible connection between any branch of the Euphrates and that distant country.

*It is highly probable, from the nature of the secondary rock above described, that these "large caves and smaller grottoes" were such natural cavities as are peculiar to some calcareous formations.

ter of that chalky formation, exposed to view in the channel of the Euphrates, at Beer.

On arriving at Orfah, we find a repetition of the above secondary indications, in the following extract. In the course of a walk round the outside wall of the city, Mr. Buckingham remarked, in the construction of the wall, three distinct periods of very ancient building. The foundation was evidently of an extremely remote period. "The surface of the blocks of stone," says he, "was, in general, much corroded by the action of the air; and, on a close examination, I was surprised to find them mostly blocks of coral and sea shells, such as are seen in the cliffs along the shores of the Red Sea, in a state of decay. In some of these, the substance seemed to be a mass of lime, in a state of decomposition, which crumbled at the touch, into a white salt-like powder. In others, the large oyster, with the small queen, or fan shell, was repeatedly and distinctly seen, with still more numerous examples of those smaller ones, like ram's horns, so frequent among the sands of every sea-beach. Other parts, the surfaces of which had become hardened by the action of the air, looked like coarse lime-stone, crossed by harder and finer veins of pure marble. These stones were all in the original structure of the wall, though, of what age, it would be difficult to determine. But the nature of the stone is well worthy of remark, in a situation so remote from any sea, and so elevated above the level of the ocean, beneath which, alone, it could have been formed. I had seen no such rocks in the way to Orfah; though no doubt the quarries from which the stones were taken, are not far remote; but, in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, there are several masses of hardened shells and coral, appearing above the surface of the ground."

We find a similar instance of secondary formation mentioned by Xenophon, in his Anabasis, iii. p. 212,who describes, in the following terms, a very large city, which the Ten Thousand passed in their famous retreat: "marching, the rest of the day, without disturbance, they came to the river Tigris, where stood a large uninhabited city, called Larissa," (probably, the Resen, mentioned as a great city, Gen. x. 12.) "anciently inhabited by the Medes, the walls of which were 25 feet broad, and 100 in height, all built of brick, except the plinth, which was built of stones, and 20 feet high. The

*

plinth of the wall was built of polished stone, FULL OF SHELLS,* &c."

These very casual observations, on the Geology of Mesopotamia, serve to indicate, in a remarkable manner, the general secondary and diluvial nature of the whole surface of that eastern region, which is composed either of secondary rocks, or diluvial sands and soils; for the calcareous or chalky character of the rocks, appears evident from the distinct mention of the fossil sea shells contained in some of the few specimens to which the traveller's attention had been attracted. The object, in quoting these extracts, is not with the view of any general information, as to the secondary nature of a great part of Syria, and the regions east of it; as our former general view of those regions tended distinctly to prove that the whole of that part of the continent of Asia, with but few exceptions, was of that secondary character. But as the chalk formation is here described as forming a considerable part of the course of the Euphrates, upon which the primitive Paradise is said to have existed, the subject is thus brought, geologically, to a positive issue.

For if it has been satisfactorily proved, in the course of this treatise, that the chalk formation formed a part of the bed of the antediluvian ocean, and that the chalk basins of geologists must have become charged with their present diluvial contents at the period of the deluge, it is an inconsistency, of the most glaring kind, to look for the site of the primitive Paradise upon the surface of a secondary country, then forming the bottom of the sea, as is satisfactorily proved by the nature of its rocks, and by the marine fossils contained in them; which, like all secondary formations, in other parts of the earth, could only have become habitable dry land, by the interchange of level between the old lands and the ocean, at the period of the deluge.

No one can, therefore, persist in his search for Paradise, in a country avowedly secondary in its rocks, and diluvial in its sandy deserts, or richer soils, without advocating a theory in

*The great pyramid of Cheops, in Egypt, stands, like the other pyramids of that country, in a plain, composed of calcareous rock.. It is formed of lime-stone, of a grayish white colour, and which exhales a fetid odour when broken by a smart blow. Thus we find another instance, of one of the earliest edifices, of post-diluvian man, formed of a secondary rock, and standing on a secondary formation.

geology still more inconsistent and wild, than has yet been advanced; for as we can trace, over all these regions through which the Tigris and the Euphrates flow, the same monuments of the flood, which are so remarkable in every other quarter of the world, in the form of boundless deserts of sand mixed with salt and shells, we might as well look for the rich and beautiful regions of our first parents in the plains of America or of Africa, as expect to discover any trace of them on the banks of the river Euphrates.

We thus come to the same point, logically, which various writers have before reached critically; and we have, in this united evidence, a striking example of what must ever happen, where human reason interferes with the sublime and consistent simplicity of DIVINE Revelation.

CHAPTER XV.

On the Creation of Mankind.-The Origin of Language.— What was the Primitive Language?—High Probability in favour of the Hebrew.-On the Diversity of Colour among Mankind.-Testimony of the Jews on this Subject.—Origin of the American Indians.-Their traditions and Customs.Their Religious Belief.-Religious Rites in the Interior of Africa.-On Sacrifice.—Traditions and Belief in the Friendly Islands.-Historical Evidence of a common descent from Noah.

On the Identity of Words among the most distant Nations.On the universal use of a Decimal gradation.-Natural Inference from all these Considerations.

It may, by some, be looked upon as an inconsistent and uncalled-for departure from the geological inquiries which form the main object of this treatise, to take, in this place, a rapid view of a subject so apparently unconnected with the structure and phenomena of the earth, as the languages, the complexions, the traditions, and the customs of many of the most distant nations. But when we consider, that the design of thus tracing the history of the earth, as recorded by inspiration, is to oppose those theories of philosophy which would expand the well-defined periods of the Mosaic history into indefinite periods, during the long lapse of which, both the mineral world, its inhabitants, and its languages, gradually became what we now find them, by the progress of society, in the one case, and by the mere laws of nature in the other, without any aid from a superior power; it may be readily admitted to be a point of no small importance, in corroboration of the correctness of the views we have taken of the earth, if we