THE ABORIGINES OF AUSTRALIA. 3 



have to do with the Ethiopian or black race, and if I can 

 show you that the Australian beliefs are closely like those of 

 the black race in other parts of the world, and yet in some 

 respects similar to those of all mankind, I think I can then, 

 without presumption, ask you to agree with me in saying that 

 Lenormant and others must be wrong when they cut off the 

 Australians from the record in the tenth chapter of Genesis, 

 and thus from all connection with the sons of Noah. 



My present task, therefore, is to show that the black tribes 

 of Australia are connected with the rest of mankind, and espe- 

 cially with the black race in Africa. But, before I attempt to 

 do so, you may consider it my duty to establish an antecedent 

 probability, or, at least, possibility, that the blacks of Africa 

 and the blacks of Australia are akin ; this will carry me back 

 to some of the earliest periods of human history. 



The Chaldaean tablets recently deciphered speak of a dark 

 race as existing in the plains of Babylonia from the earliest 

 times, and along with it a light-coloured race.* This dark 

 race I take to be the Kushites ; they seem to have been the 

 first occupiers of these regions, and had become so powerful 

 that their empire reached from the Mediterranean to the 

 Ganges, and from the Indian Ocean northwards to the plateau 

 of Ararat. Other races, however, came down upon them 

 from Central Asia, and, like a wedge, split them in two. 

 Hence the position of this race is, in Genesis x., indicated 

 ethnically by the names of Gush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and 

 Canaan, which, geographically, are the countries we call 

 Ethiopia, and Egypt, and Nubia, and Palestine. Their dominion 

 had thus been thrown much to the west of their original 

 seats, and had lodged itself in Africa, now their stronghold ; 

 but the other half of their old empire existed still, although 

 much broken, for the later Greek tradition, in the Odyssey i., 

 23, 24, speaks of an eastern as well as a western nation of 

 Ethiopians. Leaving the western Kushites to increase and 

 multiply, and spread themselves into Central Africa, let us 

 follow the fortunes of their eastern brethren. They are the 

 pure Hamites of the dispersion, and long occupied the 

 northern shores of the Persian Gulf and the plains of India. 

 Meanwhile, a composite empire, called on the inscriptions the 

 Eiprat Arbat, "the four quarters," had formed itself in 

 Lower Babylonia. This Chaldasan monarchy the first of the 

 five great monarchies of ancient history was overthrown by 



* Even Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, found them there, for, on a 

 cylinder, he speaks of "the black-headed race" as conquered and governed 

 by him. 



A2 



