NATURE IN MOTION. 81 



invariably accompany man, and as they all come from 

 the table lands of Central Asia, so, it is said, man also 

 came probably from that portion of our globe, though, 

 without doubt, at a time when the now dry and sterile 

 heights were still the luxuriant, tropical valley of Eden. 

 For geologists tell us we may with good reason presume 

 that these rich low grounds were, by some mysterious 

 convulsion, raised slowly and steadily, and thus the races 

 of men scattered abroad into the adjoining fertile valleys. 

 When this happened we know not. It must have been 

 far beyond the reach of history, legend, or vague tradi- 

 tion. Even the oldest races of the earth, whose myths, 

 fables, or songs, whose features or language, point to the 

 distant East with greatest certainty, even these found their 

 land already in possession of others. 



Thus the Celts, among the oldest nations of Europe, 

 when they arrived from their far eastern cradle, encoun- 

 tered in Europe already nations whose imperfect language, 

 lawless manners, and superstitious faith, showed how long 

 they had been separated from their early home, and from 

 their former intimate communion with the Creator. Nay,. 

 these Celts themselves, coming as they did on one of the 

 very first waves of immigration from Asia, were already 

 comparative barbarians, having lost both the culture and 

 the faith of our first fathers. If, then, so little is posi- 

 tively known of the condition of the West of Europe and 

 the ancestors of the present masters of the globe, much 

 less can be gathered as to the state of things in East 

 itself. Still, wherever legends speak, dimly though it be, 

 wherever traditions begin to shed a faint and often de- 



