DISPLACEMENT AND EXTINCTION OE BACES. 9 



in which we find the Semitic and Hamitic populations of Palestine in 

 the days of Joshua. The ethnological affinities of Egypt are certainly 

 Asiatic rather than African, although she stands isolated, and in 

 some important respects unique in relation alike to the ancient and 

 the modern world. The ethnologist must be tempted to look for the 

 congeners of the ancient Egyptian rather among the Semitic Asiatics, 

 speaking and writing a language akin to her own, than among the 

 Berber, Ethiopian, or Negro aborigines, of Africa. But around the 

 shores of that expressively designated Mediterranean Sea how striking 

 are the varied memorials of the world's past. A little area may be 

 marked off on the map, environing its eastern shores, and constituting 

 a mere spot on the surface of the globe, yet its history is the whole 

 ancient history of civilization, and a record of its ethnological changes 

 would constitute an epitome of the natural history of man. All the 

 great empires of the old world clustered around that centre, and as 

 Dr. Johnson remarked in one of his recorded conversations : " All 

 our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that 

 sets us above savages has come to us from the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean." There race has succeeded race ; the sceptre has passed 

 from nation to nation, through the historical representatives of all the 

 great primary subdivisions of the human family, and " their decay 

 has dried up realms to deserts." It is worthy of consideration, 

 however, for its bearing on analagous modern questions, how far the 

 political displacement of nations in that primeval historic area was 

 accompanied by a corresponding ethnological displacement and 

 extinction. 



It is in thi3 respect that the sacred narrative, in its bearings on the 

 primitive sub-divisions of the human family, and their appointed 

 destinies, seems specially calculated to supply the initiatory steps in 

 relation to some conclusions of general, if not universal application. 

 However mysterious it be to read of the curse of Canaan on the very 

 same page which records the blessing of Noah and his sons, and the 

 first covenant of mercy to the human race, yet the record of both 

 rest on the same indisputable authority. Still more, the curse was 

 what may strictly be termed an ethnological one. "Whether we regard 

 it as a punitive visitation on Ham in one of the lines of generation 

 of his descendants, or simply as a prophetic foretelling of the destiny 

 of a branch of the human family, we see the Canaanite separated at 

 the very first, from all the other generations of Noahic descent as a 

 race doomed to degradation and slavery. Nevertheless, to all ap- 

 pearance, many generations passed away, in the abundant enjoyment, 

 by the offspring of Canaan, of all the material blessings of the " green 



