310 GOSSIP THE AFFINITY OF RACES. 



granted there need be no further controversy about the unity of 

 mankind; and the affinity of the races of Europe, Asia and Ameri- 

 ca, separated in the early age of the world, by tremendous convul- 

 sions of nature, and left, each in its own way, to fulfil its destinies, 

 may just as well be conceded. 



Hitherto I have said nothing of Scripture testimony to the exist- 

 ence of this lost continent, nor does it embrace anything that is 

 directly significant thereof. It might however be expected, were 

 there any foundation for the tradition, that we should find some re- 

 ference thereto in the Bible. Well, we cannot feel sure that the 

 whole history of man, as there recorded, is not in fact a history of 

 Atlantis. It is not precisely defined where Paradise was situated, 

 nor its limits and bounds declared with any degree of probability. 

 The question has never yet been satisfactorily solved. It is there- 

 fore quite useless to attempt, by any fancied resemblance in the 

 world that is known, or by any process of reasoning, to identify 

 the Eden of the world that was destroyed. All the migrations of 

 the earliest race of mankind point to the east of Eden as the region 

 that was inhabited after the forced departure from that blissful seat. 

 East of Eden to the land of Nod, Cain emigrated, ceased his wan- 

 derings and built a city. The other children of Adam occupied a 

 country perhaps not far distant, as a similarity of names and a 

 limited genealogy of Cain's descendants and other evidence, make 

 an amalgamation of the races tolerably certain. It is not so difficult 

 to mark the probable resting place of the ark after the deluge, but 

 even that, modern science, based upon the Scripture relation, has 

 changed from a belief anciently entertained, to a site more in ac- 

 cordance with Scripture history as well as tradition. The journey- 

 ing from the east of the descendants of Noah, who had greatly 

 multiplied, was no insignificant exodus from that site ; and their 

 arrival at the plains of Shinar, does not imply that the Armenian 

 Ararat was the resting place of the Ark. 



But we can if we please, and without doing violence to any 

 belief, with what is known of the lands that are left on both sides 

 of the Atlantic, with what we may conjecture of the convulsions 

 that have separated them and their races, and various species of 

 animals, and reduced them to their present condition, conclude that 



