376 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



regards its subsequent alliances and interunions, had the right 

 to call itself pure or unmixed. All the tril rid d from 



Abraham and Lot were of high land 

 through Armenia, clearly in part of a fair rufo 

 eyed, and auburn hair. Evidence of the fact is repeatedly 

 traced in history and in tradition. The manifestation is still 

 positively marked in many Oriental Israelites; and in Morocco, 

 a region least liable to that kind of adulteration, the women in 

 particular 1 eing to this day generally gray-eyed. The family 

 of Heber was, therefore, not Chaldean nor Assyrian. It came 

 from the East, and might be of the same stem as that which 

 subsequently invaded the Suleimanic range, west of the Indus, 

 for here was an early national centre, whence colonies pene- 

 trated to India, where Hebrew congeners may now be believed 

 to exist ; as tribes of Rajpoots, and others, passing on to the 

 borders of Indo-China, may be the present Mugs, for all of 

 these have the peculiar Hebrew aspect and conformation ; have 

 even rites and customs similar to that people, as well as tra- 

 ditions and reminiscences, which now assume the aspect of 

 actual descent from the lost tribes of Israel.* These facts 

 establish an affinity too positive for utter rejection. Although 

 we will not carry the conditions of Hebrew consanguinity 

 further than to hint that perhaps the promised high destiny of 

 the race embraced alliances which should include the three 

 great typical forms ; first, by connection with the rufous stem, 

 through the Asiatic Finn tribes, who were the Scythian con- 

 querors, at one time in Armenia, and again for ages resident 

 in northern Egypt and Palestine ; and in the second, by the long 



* The assertion that these AfFghans expelled a nation of Kaafirs or idol- 

 aters since the Hegira, is more unlikely than that they themselves are 

 converted idolaters ; for mountain tribes are not expelled by passing- 

 conquerors who have themselves Jewish rites. It is more likely that 

 original consanguinity carried Jewish fugitives among them, whose 

 books and wondrous history caused the whole clan to adopt them as their 

 own. 



