220 VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



the traditions of all old people, to a single pair, from which 

 families, tribes, and nations have been successively pro- 

 duced. The question has been often asked. What was this 

 first family, and the first people descending from it? Where 

 was it settled ; and how has it extended, so as to fill the four 

 large divisions of the globe ? It is a question of fact, and 

 must be answered from history. But history is silent ; her 

 first books have been destroyed by time ; and the few lines 

 preserved by Moses are rather calculated to excite than to 

 satisfy our curiosity. 



" In the first feeble rays of its early dawn, which are 

 faintly perceived about 2000 years before the commence- 

 ment of our present chronology, the whole of Asia, and a 

 part of Africa, are already occupied with a variety of greater 

 and smaller nations, of various manners, religion, and 

 language. The warlike struggle is already in full activity : 

 here and there are polished states, with various useful inven- 

 tions, which must have required long time for their pro- 

 duction, developement and extension. The rest of the 

 human race consists of wild hordes, occupied merely with 

 pastoral pursuits, hunting, and robbery : thus a kind of 

 slave-trade is seen in the time of Abraham. Soon after, 

 a few weak glimmerings of light discover to us Europe 

 in a similar state of population, from the Don to the 

 Pillars of Hercules ; here and there traces of culture, 

 industry, and commerce: for instance, the amber trade in 

 the Baltic, at least in the time of Homer, and that of the 

 British tin. All this is perceived in remote obscurity, 

 where only a few points of light occasionally shoot across, 

 to shew us the germs of future history, which is still pro- 

 foundly silent respecting the time and place of such events. 

 Nothing is left for us, but humbly to assume the garb of 

 ignorance, to look round us in the great archives of nature, 

 and see if there are any documents which may at least lead 

 us to conjectures. Happily there are such. 



" The present structure of the earth's surface teaches us, 

 what MosEs confirms, that it was formerly covered to a 

 certain depth with water, which gradually lessened, from 



