GOSSIP THE AFFINITY OF RACES. 299 



been lost to the world. It has frequently changed its base, but it 

 has always advanced and spread itself abroad. We may say that 

 it was almost contemporaneous in Egj^pt and Assyria, in India and 

 Phoenicia, in all of which it may have been introduced (you will 

 excuse the hypothesis which has taken possession of my mind and 

 to w^hich I shall again allude) by the sons of Noah and their pro- 

 geny. They preserved their genealogy, were perfect in their genera- 

 tions, and transmitted the high cultivation of a race that peopled 

 some particular region beyond the confines of Paradise, wherever 

 that may have been, down to the time of the Flood, to all the 

 countries to which they spread after that event. Some of their 

 descendants having at length arrived at the Mediterranean, they 

 found a land suitable for settlement, and a people with whom they 

 mingled, whose derivation, customs, and dialects may have been 

 similar to those of the American tribes, but who were perhaps 

 better fitted to accept the improvements that were tendered to them 

 by this regenerating race. 



It is difficult at the present day to ascertain Avhether or not the 

 Mediterranean was affected by the Noachian deluge. An obscure 

 tradition or myth among the Greeks* points to such an event. The 

 most ancient Egyptian monuments are quite oblivious of that catas- 

 trophe. The record however, of customs which may be considered 

 ante-diluvian are numerous. They are found amongst the Carians as 

 amongst the Caribs, in their tombs. Far beyond the age of bronze, 

 vrhen the people on the shores of Asia Minor knew of no other im- 

 plements than those they manufactured of stone, they buried their 

 dead, as the Caribs buried theirs, in a contracted posture, with 

 their knees to the chin, a practice that was first modified and then 

 changed, when bronze and iron came into use. Wherever mankind 

 had wandered by successive removals far from the primitive home, 

 had realized that the earth bare unto them only thorns and thistles, 

 and were led to a dependence on the wild beasts and fishes for sub- 

 sistence, their normal intelligence being entirely superseded by animal 

 instinct, this custom seems never to have been forgotten. All 

 throughout Europe it prevailed, and what is remarkable as proving 



* The deluge of Ogyges. 



