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when we faw him^ be above thirty years of age, was marked 
with the fmall pox. It is rather fingular that a difeafe, which 
is fuppofed to have originated in the northern parts of this con- 
tinent, and from thence difleminated into every corner of the 
world, fhould neither be endemic in the fouthern extremity of 
the fame continent, nor its contagious eifeds, when carried 
thither, of permanent duration. 
I am aware that fo me modern authors have traced the origin 
of the fmall pox to Arabia, where it was common at the time 
of the flight from Mecca j but I think Dottor Mead's opinion 
more probable, that, at a much earlier period it prevailed, along 
with the plague, in Ethiopia and other inland countries of 
Northern Africa. For had a difeafe of fo contagious a nature 
been endemic in Arabia, in the beginning of the feventh cen- 
tury, when the inhabitants of this country were the carriers of 
the eaftern, and the conquerors of the weftern world, its bane- 
ful eft'cifls w^ould fooner have been experienced in foreign na- 
tions. That the Saracens and Arabians were the means of dif- 
perfmg it through the world, there can be little doubt. The- 
Chinefe, according to their own annals^ had it from the latter 
in the tenth century ; and as Dodor Mead has obferved, in the 
beginning of the twelfth century it gained vaft ground by 
means of the wars waged by a confederacy of the Chriftian 
powers againft the Saracens for the recovery of the Holy Land ; 
** This being," fays the Doctor, " the only vifible recompence 
" of their religious expeditions, which they brought back to 
** their refpedive countries." The Ethiopians being a race 
©f people almofl unknown, and fhut out. fnom, all commerce 
with 
