210 



NATURAL HISTORY OF 



mixed races, which, like the Ethiopians of Asia, passed 

 the Red Sea at the straits of Bab-el-mandeb, ascended 

 the Nile, or crossed that river to the west: for that 

 movements of this kind were long continued, is appa- 

 rent, from the Nagas or Norages, who visited Spain 

 and the Mediterranean islands under Norax, so late as 

 the dawn of authentic history. 



Taking the whole southern portion of Asia westward 

 to Arabia, this conjecture, which likewise was a con- 

 clusion drawn, after patient research, by the late Sir 

 T. Stamford Raffles, accounts, more satisfactorily than 

 any other, for the Oriental habits, ideas, traditions, 

 and words, which can be traced among .several of the 

 present African tribes and in the South Sea Islands; 

 it points out the primaeval cities of the woolly haired 

 people in Nangasaki, or rather, in its ancient form, 

 Nagaraki, according to Pfitzmayer ; Nagara, now Cash- 

 mere ; Nagara, the known capital of a most ancient 

 Naga people.* Further, in the plains, are Nagpoor, 

 and a ruined city without name, at the gates of Benares 

 (perhaps the real Kasi of tradition), once adorned with 

 statues of a woolly haired race ; and lower still, on the 

 Indus, Pattala, the ancient empire of the Naga or ser- 

 pent kings, before it became a mythological legend. 



* This Nagara stood on the Indus, between latitude 32 

 ind 33, and was a Dionysiopolis according to Ptolemy ; but 

 more probably the fanum of some Naag Sahib, a serpent 

 god with human sacrifices, such as the Naag tribes had 

 upon the upper Nile, and still retain in Cutch. Naag and 

 Naga, if it be a Sanscrit word, is also well known in more 

 than one African dialect. 



