THE NOACHIAN FLOOD. 51 



and strained to activity by the very superabundance of 

 their resources, the virgin soil of a new country, an 

 inherited civilization, enormous and ever -enlarging 

 facilities for doing, for living, moving, and learning 

 facilities sometimes that cannot be declined or escaped 

 from, though they ' fret the pigmy body to decay, and 

 o'er-inform the tenement of clay.' 



But, in truth, there is no question of 4000 years in 

 the matter ; for there were black people in the time of 

 Herodotus and in the time of Solomon. Already in the 

 time of Moses there existed a race in Palestine so differ- 

 ent from the Israelites, that the first Hebrew explorers 

 were daunted by the sight of them, although, in fact, 

 they were looking on a race no longer in its prime, but 

 one that was dying out. Egyptian monuments, dating 

 back to the same period and earlier, give representations 

 of Africans, Asiatics, and Europeans, with their physical 

 characteristics then as now unmistakeably distinct ; they 

 portray the Negro as the Negro still is both in colour 

 and in features 1 . 



If it took only 800 years, then, which is the interval 

 between the Flood and the birth of Moses, to originate 

 and establish types so distinct as Jews, Egyptians, 

 Negroes, and Anakim, all gathered together in a little 

 corner of the world, might not Nature, having done 

 so much in so short a time for the highest animal, do a 

 little more in a longer time for lower animals, and 

 so supply that origin of species by variation for which 



1 ' Genesis of the Earth and of Man,' p. 117 ; quoted in Sir J. Lub- 

 bock's ' Prehistoric Times/ p. 314. 



E 2, 



