No. 5.] CAMPBELL — HITTITES IN AMERICA. 275 



The reader in this connection is referred to the abstract of a 

 memoir communicated by the writer to the British Association 

 at Dublin in August, 1878, on The Origin and the Succession 

 of the Crystalline Rocks of North America, which will be found 

 in the Geological Magazine for that year (page 466), as well as 

 in Nature, vol. xviii, page 443. 



Montreal, February, 1880. 



HITTITES IN AMERICA. 



By John Campbell, M. A. 

 Professor in the Presbyterian College, Montreal. 



Perhaps the most startling and important discovery ever made 

 in comparative philology is that announced some time ago by 

 Dr. Hyde Clarke in his " Khita and Khita- Peruvian Epoch." 

 The Khita of the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions, whose 

 records in Carchemish and in Asia Minor have recently been 

 discovered by the Rev. Professor Sayce, are the Hittites of 

 Bible Story, a large and powerful confederacy that ruled for a 

 time the whole of Palestine, invaded and occupied for many 

 years the Lower Egyptian Kingdom, and afterwards measured 

 their strength with the Assyrian monarclis, as lords of Mesopo- 

 tamia and Syiia. As late as the reign of Jehoram, son of Ahab, 

 they are mentioned in the book of Kings as a great and warlike 

 people, and the Assyrian records furnish still later accounts of 

 their hostilities. Then they disappear from the page of authentic 

 history, and find mention in the legendary stories of the Moham- 

 medan writers of Persia and neighboring countries, as inhabitants 

 of Touran and allies of the Tartars and Chinese. Sadik Isfa- 

 hani, the geographer, places Khita in the northern part of China ; 

 and Katai or Cathay, the name by which the Celestial Empire 

 was known to Marco Polo, and to Europeans in general for a 

 long period, is but a survival of the same ancient national desig- 

 nation. In the time of Strabo, the Cathaei of Cathaia were 

 still in the vicinity of the Punjaub, from whence a portion of 

 -them may have passed to farther India, for Dr. Hyde Clarke 



