OF ANCIENT NATIONS. 439 



but in another desert-surrounded country, of the 

 same character ; probably, that which surrounds the 

 sources of the Bahr ul Abiad. 



The African origin of other ancient nations 

 can also be most easily demonstrated, and the 

 historical accounts of their descent from gods, 

 which have come down to us, although they 

 consist of exaggerated and distorted relations, 

 in consequence of having been derived from the 

 ignorant translation of hieroglyphical records, in 

 which it would appear that the earlier history of 

 Africa was preserved; still we are able to gather 

 from these mythological enigmas everything that is 

 necessary to connect their origin with a common 

 centre of divergence, which I believe to have 

 been the country around the sources of the Nile. 



In the same manner the worship of the rivers in 

 India, and of the dragon monster in China, seem 

 to have originated from Ethiopia; the emigration 

 which carried the first colonies of serpent worshippers 

 to these countries having probably flowed in a direc- 

 tion from the south, as Europe and Western Asia 

 appear to have been civilized by colonists from the 

 north of the same point of dispersion. 



It is most interesting to trace the intimate con- 

 nexion at an early period of the, at present, widely 

 separated and even physically distinct varieties of 

 man ; and did not a cautious policy restrain me, I 

 would attempt to demonstrate the original unity oi 

 nations now the most dissimilar upon novel evidence, 



