VARIETIES OF MANKIND, 463 



which is the same as Bryant's, although founded on different 

 principles. 



' The countries bounded on the east and west by the Ganges 

 and the Nile, on the North by the Caspian lake, and the moun- 

 tainous ridges of Paropamisus and Imaus, and on the south by 

 the Erythraean sea, or Indian ocean, appear to have been the 

 region in which mankind first advanced to civilization. It is 

 highly probable that these countries were the primitive abode of 

 our species, in which alone therefore it can properly be considered 

 us indigenous. 



' In the first ages, previous to the origin of the most simple 

 arts, while men were as yet too rude to accjuire their sustenance 

 by hunting (or if we receive the scriptural account of the de- 

 luge, before the woods were filled with wild animals), they appa- 

 rently obtained their food chiefly by fishing along the sea shores, 

 or depended for a still more precarious supply on the scanty 

 iruits of the earth. In this state they would of necessity lead a 

 wandering life and extend themselves widely. Different tribes 

 of ichthyophagi or of roaming savages were scattered on each 

 side of the primitive region, wherever an easy progress lay open 

 to them, along the coast or through the woods of Africa, and 

 around the shores of the Indian islands, of New Guinea, and 

 Australasia. The descendants of these dispersed races are still 

 found in the same abodes nearly in their original unimproved 

 condition, savages and negroes, such as we have seen that the 

 stock of their ancestors, the primeval inhabitants of Egypt and 

 India, were. 



about, with an alacrity in their motions, which carries with it every mark of 

 pleasure. Large patches of ground arc sometimes half covered with these, 

 brisk and sprightly natures. If we look to what the waters produce, shoals of 

 the fry of rish frequent the margins of rivers, of lakes, and of the sea itself. 

 These are so happy, that they know not what to do with themselves. Their 

 attitudes, their vivacity, their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it (which 

 1 have noticed a thousand times with equal attention and amusement,) all 

 '-oiulni-e to show their excess of spirits, and are simply the effects of that 

 excess," &c. &.c l ; aley, Natural Thraloiry, ch. xxvi. 



