35 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



countenanced by others, such as the antediluvian so- 

 vereigns Mahabad, " Father of mankind ;" Biurasp, 

 " King before the flood ;" and Gilshah, The first 

 man ;" all mythical records of the first Caucasian in- 

 vasions from the high lands, and the wars they waged 

 upon the black populations in possession of the land. 

 If the relation of Herodotus can be admitted, they 

 were in his time not quite extinct in Colchis. The 

 evidence of their blood remains marked in the present 

 Badoueen Arabs ; it was unquestionable in the race of 

 Ham ^in Chaldea and Syria ; in the Ethiopia of 

 southern Persia, Persis, Chusistan, and Susiana; in 

 Arabia Deserta, from the southern coasts of the Indus 

 to the Straits of I^b-el-Mandeb, and in Upper Egypt 

 to Nubia and Cordofan. 



Tuj.e Shah Nameh furnishes traces of their wars 

 with the Iranians, and Asiatic Ethiopians are histo- 

 rically noticed in the time of Xerxes. The whole 

 region, from Hindostan to Lybia, was anciently, and 

 even is now by Orientals, frequently denominated 

 India. Like their ancestors, the population still forms 

 a mixed race, having in general ruling families of a 

 white origin; sometimes named Getae (Goths), Ger- 

 manii of Kermanshah. Strabo (lib. vii.) makes Pyre- 

 bestas (Abu Rebbia) rule the Getse. Ammianus calls 

 Arabia the desert of the Getae ; and the Beni-Ghour 

 (children of the swamp) are still regarded as a fair 

 race, descended from that stock. 



It is in this territory, and adjoining Egypt, that in 

 the earliest antiquity a very considerable civilization 



