178 DIVERSITY OF RACES. 



painted with all the peculiarities of the Copt at the present day, 

 and with him were represented the white and blue-eyed stranger 

 from the North, and the sable sons of the South.* Long back in 

 time, in the cave of Elephanta, of which not even the ancient 

 books or traditions of the Brahmins have preserved an account, 

 were placed the sculptured images of the Indian, the perfect 

 statues of the modern Hindoo, and of the crisp-haired African. f 

 Thus to the earliest date of history must we refer the existence 

 of permanent nations, as also the existence in them and around 

 them of permanent races. Arid no one will gravely say, that 

 either through or from Egypt there went out a tribe which was 

 so soon found to be the ill-formed Negro, from India another 

 branch which immediately stood forth as the fair Caucasian, and 

 from China another which appeared as the red race, while the 

 original families remained of the same dark hue and peculiar 

 organization. 



If now we turn to the researches which have been made in 

 relation to the antiquity of the old Empires of Asia, we will find 

 that all antiquarians, without giving the least credence to the 

 pretensions of those nations to a prodigious age, but judging 

 from their literature connected with accidental astronomical 

 observations, have dated back their origin to a period coeval 

 with, and in most cases long anterior to the scriptural era of the 

 Deluge. They are united, so far as I have been able to find, in 

 fixing the dawn of reliable history, in Egypt,;): in either India, 

 and in China, | between the first century after and the fifth 

 before that epoch. And beyond these comparatively authentic 

 periods, traditions and dark mythologies tell us of wonderful 

 demi-gods, of dynasties of the sun and moon, of silver and 

 golden ages, reaching back in time to the day when the fiat of 

 the Omnipotent spoke man into being. When now we consider 

 that in those remote ages, many centuries must have been 



*Creppo's "Researches of Champollion," p. 264. 

 f Asiatic Researches, vol. 4, p. 431 and 433. 

 JPrichard, vol. 2, p. 199. Creppo's Cham., p. 82 



gPrichard, vol. 4, p. 105 and 106; also p. 107, note, and vol. 2, p. 195 and 

 196. Heeren "On Anc. Nat. of Asia," vol. 3, p. 291 and 304. 

 || Prichard, vol. 4, p. 474-477. 



