1534 The Zoologist — February, J 869. 



Aithiops of the Greek, and .^thiops of the Romans, to be applied to 

 those black people inhabiting the country south of Egypt, and now 

 generally known as Negroes ; the word Ethiopian conveys one only 

 meaning, people having a black countenance or skin. The question 

 in Jeremiah, " Can the Cushite change his skin ? " implies that 

 he possessed a skin differently coloured from that of the Israelite, 

 and I know of no theory that seems to controvert this point. 

 The Jewish chronicles always represent the Cushites as a most for- 

 midable people, a people whose military prowess was equal to their 

 numbers, and whose attacks could only be resisted by the express 

 intervention of the Almighty : it seems to be unhesitatingly admitted 

 that the unaided arm of the Hebrew was totally incompetent to arrest 

 their northward progress, and that the Almighty alone could success- 

 fully contend with them. We find in the second book of Chronicles 

 the record of two Negro invasions of Juda;a on a scale of magnificence 

 that the Napoleons and Wellingtons of our time might read of with 

 envy. In the fifth year of the reign of king Rehoboam, Shishak, king 

 of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem with twelve hundred war-chariots, 

 and sixty thousand cavalry, and infantry without number; they were 

 Lubims and Sukkiims and Cushites ; this array took possession oi all 

 the cities of Juda;a; it pillaged the temple of Solomon and the palace 

 of Rehoboam, and carried away the shields of gold which Solomon 

 had made : and the children of Israel became the slaves of the Negro : 

 this was a thousand years before the Christian era : the date in the 

 margin is B. c. 972. A second invasion took place about twenty years 

 later under Zerah the Cushite, and in this instance no mention is made 

 of auxiliary forces. Since the previous invasion the Israelites, under 

 Asa, the grandson of Rehoboam, had built and fortified a number of 

 strong cities jiurposcly to resist these formidable invaders : Asa had 

 also raised and disciplined an army of five hundred and eighty thousand 

 men. Such was the prepared state of Judaea when the second great 

 invasion of Negroes took place, when Zerah came up out of Ethiopia 

 with a million of armed Negroes and three hundred war-chariots, and 

 "cattle and sheep and camels in abundance," which shows how 

 thoroughly the Negro then understood the commissariat department ; 

 the cattle and sheep being provided for food, the camels for transport. 

 The very simple Scripture narrative conveys the idea of the most con- 

 summate organization, the almost boundless resources of the Negro. 



Here it has been objected that the numbers used by the Hebrew his- 

 torian in the books of Chronicles and Kings are greatly exaggerated ; 



