THE HUMAN SPECIES. £69 



vast sea-serpent, and converting the ship or ark into a living 

 organ of preservation and reproduction : thus was substance 

 afforded for interminable legends, names, and dogmas, which, 

 in Dne or more forms, spread all around, reached the furthest 

 west, originated the repetition of ancient names for new local- 

 ities, new sites of Paradise, new rivers of Eden, new moun- 

 tains of the Descent, in the succession of migrations, and when 

 time had fixed fresh centres of national existence.* In this 

 manner, while the Semitic nations recalled the memory of 

 their primeval social abode in the Babel of Babylon, the 

 Egyptians saw their Arkite city at Thebes, or Theba ; the 

 Persian Arii found the city of the gods in Pasargade, where 

 the huge palace was again an ark ; the Hindoos pointed to 

 Kasi, now Benares; and the western Teutonic nations to 

 Asgard, near the mouth of the Don; while, by the very radia- 

 tion of these localities, there is reason to believe, what tradition 

 confirms, that the original locality was high up the course of 

 the Oxus, if, indeed, it was not actually within the mountains 

 of Hindu-Koosh, or Bokhara, significantly denominated the 

 High Land of God. 



The great mental activity stimulating all the races of this 

 type to physical exertion, has caused the earliest ages to be re- 

 plete with their wars and conquests. First, probably, they were 



* The root, Ar, in Arach, Araxes, Arachosia, Arbela, Arch, Ararat, 

 Arawati, Aarhorn, Aar, and Ra, rivers, ever implies rushing, soaring, as 

 in the Circassian a peak, in Pelhevic a roaring stream, and in Sanscrit 

 denominations abounding in High Asia always connected with mountain 

 and high land : hence we find it often in connection with the physical local- 

 ities, where Eden and the four rivers of Paradise, as well as the diluvian 

 event, are placed by the traditions of nations. Indian pundits have 

 p nted out Lake Manasa, 17,000 feet above the sea, as the sacred centre 

 wnence the four rivers of Paradise, the Brahmaputra, Ganges, Indus, and 

 Sita, are erroneously asserted to proceed. But each nation long located 

 in a region has found a sacred centre, and the required rivers, at no great 

 distance from home. There are at least twenty of them between Thibet 

 and Snowdon. 



