Families op Nations, 40s 



trous veneration for their fages and lawgivers ; that they were difperfed at 

 various intervals and in various colonies over land and ocean ; that the 

 tribes of Misr, Cush, and Rama fettled in Africk and India; while fome 

 of them, having improved the art of failing, paffed from Egypt, Pbenice % 

 and Phrygia, into Italy and Greece, which they found thinly peopled by 

 former emigrants, of whom they fupplanted fome tribes, and united them- 

 felves with others j whilft a fwarm from the fame hive moved by a 

 northerly courfe into Scandinavia, and another, by the head of the Oxus, 

 and through the paiTes of Imaus, into Cajlighar and Eighur, Khatd and 

 Khoten, as far as the territories of Chin and ^ancut, where letters have 

 been ufed and arts immemorially cultivated; nor is it unreafonable to be- 

 lieve, that fome of them found their way from the eaftern ifles into Mexico 

 and Peru, where traces were difcovered of rude literature and Mythology 

 analogous to thofe of Egypt and India ; that, thirdly, the old Chaldean em- 

 pire being overthrown by the AJJyrians under Cayu'mers, other migra- 

 tions took place especially into Jndia,"white the reft of Siiem's progeny, fome 

 of whom had before fettled on the Red Sea, peopled the whole Arabian 

 peninfula, preffing clofe on the nations of Syria and Phenice ; that, laftly, 

 from all the three families were detached many bold adventurers of an ar- 

 dent fpirit and a roving difpoiition, who difdained fubordination and wan- 

 dered in feparate clans, till they fettled in diftant ifles or in deferts and 

 mountainous regions; that, on the whole, fome colonies might have mi- 

 grated before the death of their venerable progenitor, but that itates and 

 empires could fcarce have aiTumed a regular form, till fifteen or fixteen 

 hundred years before the Chrijiian epoch, and that, for the firft thoufand 

 years of that period, we have no hiftory unmixed with fable, except that 

 of the turbulent and variable, but eminently diftinguifhed, nation defcend- 

 ed from Abraham. 



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