174 SURGEON-GENERAL ©. A. GORDON. 
flowing with verdure. Here they settled themselves, and 
called the land Sin, which we have called China.” * 
There are authors who see in the similarity of some of the 
customs of the Chinese and of the ancient Egyptians sufficient 
reason for the belief that a connexion anciently existed between 
those two peoples. With each, agriculture was held in high 
repute ; astronomical science early cultivated ; respect for 
parents inculcated ; the dead worshipped ; hieroglyphic and 
symbolic writing practised. In the opinion of an eminent 
Sinologist of the present day :—‘ In all probability the out- 
break in Susiana of some political disturbance in about 
B.C. 2283 drove the Chinese from the land of their adoption, 
whence they wandered eastward until they finally settled in 
China and the countries south of the region so named.” + 
That theory is supported by various arguments and circum- 
stances. or example, the migrations of the three primitivet 
historical races are for the most part acknowledged to have 
begun about B.C. 2614, namely, at a period antecedent by 
more than five centuries (541 years) to the Noachian deluge. 
Nor are there wanting writers who accept the view that in 
still earlier times migrations took place of tribes which can 
only be referred to as “non-historical.”” Such migrations of 
the “historical” races as are above alluded to continued 
during the period mentioned down to the twenty-second 
century B.C.; in their course colonies and distant com- 
munities may be considered to have been established, and 
various forms of society and of government instituted, those 
of China among others.§ 
“Tt would be a hopeless task to attempt to explain, on any 
certain grounds,”’—so wrote an eminent historian, ||—“ the 
* Lectures on the Origin and Migrations of the Human Race. London, 
1865. See Note 2, p. 193. 
+ Douglas. 
t The theory of Isaac de la Pierére, A.D. 1655, adverts to Pre-Adamites 
with whom Cain intermarried, and produced a black progeny. — Hales, 
vol.i., 365. See also Nouvelle Biographie Universelle for turther details 
in regard to that theory. 
§ As the Pheenicians, Arabians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Libyans 
southwards ; the Persians, Indians, and Chinese eastwards ; the Scythians, 
Celts, and Tartars, northwards ; the Greeks and Latins, even as far as the 
Peruvians, and Mexicans of South America, and the Indian tribes of 
North America, westwards.—Hales’s Chronology, vol. ii., p. 50. 
|| Sir John Davis, The Chinese, p. 122. 
Norze.—Adverting to the allusion made above to the migration of non- 
historic races, Lawrence wrote to this effect :—‘‘Cain, after slaying his 
brother, was married, although no daughters of Eve are mentioned before 
this time.—Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the 
land of Nod, on the east of Eden (Genesis iv. 17), where he married a wife 
and by her had a son, Enoch, though no daughters of Eve were mentioned 
before this time.”—Lectures on Man, p. 168. 
