Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 105 



in these islands, which, formed the cradle of the Malayan race, 

 would be precisely that of the earliest generations of mankind 

 after the Deluge. And what, I ask, was the remarkable charac- 

 teristic of that civilisation ? Why, it was doubtless the pyramidal 

 and colossal character of its architecture. For just as a connois- 

 seur in architecture can tell us at a glance whether any particular 

 building has been of Roman, of Saxon, of Norman, of early 

 Gothic, or of Elizabethan construction, so wherever we can trace 

 these remarkable characteristics of the earliast postdiluvian 

 architecture, its pyramidal and colossal character, we may con- 

 fidently conclude that the people who erected such builings 

 derived their civilisation directly from the ages and the genera- 

 tions of men immediately succeeding the Deluge. 



Various circumstances in the aspect and history of the earlier 

 postdiluvian nations warrant the conclusion that these nations 

 had attained a considerable degree of civilisation, and had derived 

 that civilisation from one common source. In ancient Etruria 

 and in Egypt, in India and in China, in the South Sea Islands 

 and in both Americas, we behold the evidences of a primitive 

 civilisation, which, in some instances, had run its course anterior 

 to the age of Homer, but which, at all events, acknowledged no 

 obligation to the wisdom or refinement of the Greeks. The poet 

 Lucretius inquires why there are no poems of an earlier date 

 than the Siege of Troy, and infers that as no poems of an earlier 

 period have been preserved, none were written. But we may 

 rest assured that poetry was not the invention of Orpheus, or of 

 Hesiod, or of Homer. If the harp and the organ — those antedi- 

 luvian inventions of Jubal — were made to " discourse sweet 

 music" in the cities of Cain, we may conclude with absolute 

 certainty, that the "daughters of men" would link with their 

 dulcet sounds the inspirations of poetry and the symphonies of 

 song. 



But if the antediluvians were not barbarians, neither were 

 those eight persons that survived the Deluge, and landed on the 

 mountains of Armenia from that ancient vessel which was destined 

 to preserve the relics of one world and the germ of another. 

 Antecedently to all historical evidence of the fact, we should be 

 warranted in supposing that Noah and his son3 would preserve 

 a knowledge of the arts that flourished, and of the sciences that 

 were cultivated, in the antediluvian world, and that they would 

 exhibit in their earliest postdiluvian settlements the forms and 

 features of antediluvian civilisation. But we are not left to the 

 uncertainty of mere conjecture on this point ; for one of the first 

 acts of the liberated occupant of the ark was to cultivate the 

 vine, and the earliest effort of the combined labour of his offspring 

 was to build a city and a tower whose top should reach the 

 heavens. " The wisdom of the Egyptians" and " the excellency 



