THE HUMAN SPECIES. 373 



tumi, the Phoenicians, and the Getse. Internat.onal tvars, and 

 the usual decrease of the fair-skinned master race in clima'res 

 of tropical heat, caused several tribes to be lost, such as those 

 of Ad, Thamud, Jades, and Tasm, which, being of the more 

 northern portion, were chiefly affected by these causes, and 

 subsequently were vanquished by the Cuthites of Yemen, or 

 were absorbed; and their fate is the subject of sundry marvel- 

 lous legends in the Tarikh Tebri. 



At present there remain the Arab-el-Arabah, forming two 

 stems, claiming Kahtan for common parent. They are per- 

 haps the Hadoram and Tarah of Moses ; but it is not to them 

 that Arabia is indebted for celebrity. Affiliated races produced 

 it. The Mostarabi, or Ishmaelites of the Hejas, claim the 

 honor, and assume a superior nobility of blood, as descendants 

 from Abraham. They are the fabricators of the Kaba, and the 

 distorted legends concerning the patriarchs. In that vocation 

 it seems the Koreish have been chiefly engaged, although the 

 affinity they have with the descendants of Ishmael is doubtful; 

 it being believed that they were originally Edomites, that is, 

 a red-haired people. In this vicinity, among the Edomite cities, 

 there was Erech, Raphia, or Rekem, near Mons Casius and 

 Larissa, Larsh near Gaza, both bearing evidently names con- 

 nected with a Scythic dialect, and repeated wherever Pelasgian 

 nations were spread, from Asia Minor to the Danube ; equally 

 common to Celto-Scythic possessions, as the names of Lorch, 

 Lorach, Lorca, Lara, and Larch, abound in Spain and Southern 

 Germany.* Towards the mouth of the Euphrates, however, 

 in the vicinity of scriptural Bosra, the Arabian Zobeir was 

 inhabited by the Orchaeni, a colony, it appears, of Indo- 

 Ethiopians, who, Pliny says, promulgated " a tertia Chaldafo- 

 rum doctrina." They had acquirements in astronomy and 

 science which were regarded as magical. The inhabitants 



* Even Nineveh is termed Larissa by Xenophon, and as the eastern- 

 most of the thirteen places so named by the ancients. Most of these were 

 of Pelasgian origin. 



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