that it was reported by the inhabitants of Castilla del Oro, in Terra Firma, that during a universal deluge, one man and his children were the only persons who escaped, by means of a canoe, and that from them the world was afterwards peopled. According to the Peruvians, in consequence of a general inundation by violent and continued rains, a universal destruction of the human race took place, a few persons only excepted, who escaped into caves on the tops of the mountains, into which they had previously conveyed a stock of provisions, and a number of live animals; but for this, when the waters abated, the whole race would have become extinct. Others of them affirm that only six persons were saved by means of a float or raft; and that from them all the inhabitants of the country are descended. They farther believe that this event took place before there were any incas or kings among them, and when the country was extremely populous. The Brazilians not only preserve the tradition of a deluge, but believe that the whole race of mankind perished in it, except one man and his sister; according to others two brothers, with their wives, who were preserved by climbing the highest trees on their loftiest mountains: and who afterwards became the heads of two different nations. The memory of this event they are even said to celebrate in some of their religious anthems or songs. Accosta, in his history of the Indies, says that the Mexicans speak of a deluge in their country by which all men were drowned, and that it was afterwards peopled by Viracocha who came out of the lake Titicaca; and according to Harrera, the Machoachans, a people comparatively in the neighborhood of Mexico, had a tradition that a single family was formerly preserved in an ark, amid a deluge of waters, and that along with them a sufficient number of animals were saved to stock the new world. During the time that they were shut up in the ark, a number of ravens were sent out, one of which brought back the branch of a tree.

"At the close of one of the Mexican cycles, according to some, the first, but according to others, the fourth, which lasted four thousand and eight years, there was a great inundation which destroyed all mankind, except one man and woman, who saved themselves in the trunk of a deciduous cypress. The opposite engraving, which was originally copied from a hieroglyphic painting in New Spain, by the Dominican monk Pedro de los Rios, so early as A. D. 1566, represents the goddess of water, and Noah and his wife, (Coxcox and Zoohiquetzal) seated on the trunk of a tree, covered with leaves, and floating amidst the waters. The detached hieroglyphics on the left hand, are thought to be the astronomical, or rather zodiacal sym

bols, denoting the day on which the catastrophe is believed to have occurred."*

The outcry of a certain class of Infidels is," Bring us facts which all the world agree in; facts admitted, established by unbiased evidence, to establish the assertion that Deity has condescended to make known his intentions to man?" Here we have what the Infidel demands. The deluge was a real occurrence which infidelity itself cannot disprove. All mankind acknowledge that there was a deluge. Wherever tradition has been maintained, wherever records are preserved; wherever commemorative rites have been instituted, the deluge has been their subject. The savage and the sage agree in this, the deliverance of their great ancestor from destruction by a flood. The north and the south, the east and the west, relate his danger from overwhelming waters. But he was saved; and how? By personal exertion? By long supported swimming? By concealment in the highest mountains? No; but by enclosure in a large floating edifice of his own construction-his own construction for this particular purpose. But this labor was long; this was not the work of a day; he must have FOREKNOWN so astonishing an event a considerable time previous to its actual occurrence. Whence did he receive this FOREKNOWLEDGE? Did the earth inform him, that at twenty, thirty, forty years distance it would disgorge a flood? Did the stars announce that they would dissolve the tranquil atmosphere in terrific rains? Whence, then, had Noah his FOREKNOWLEDGE? Did he hope to build when the first showers descended? This was too late. Had he been accustomed to rains formerly, why think them now of importance? Had he never seen rain, what could induce him to provide against it? Why this year more than last year; why last year more than the year before? These enquiries are direct: we cannot flinch from the fact. Erase it from the Mosaic records; still it is recorded in Greece, in Egypt, in India, in Britain and America. It is registered in the very sacra of the pagan world, and is annually renewed by commemorative imitation, where the liberty of opinion is not fettered by prejudices derived from Hebrew institutions, or by the "sophisticated inventions of Christianity." Let the Infidel turn to the right hand or to the left hand. Let him take his choice of difficulties; disparage all mankind as fools, as willing dupes to superstitious commemorations, as leagued throughout the world to delude themselves in order to impugn his wisdom, his just thinking, his love

of truth, his unbiased integrity; or he must allow that THIS FACT, at least this ONE fact, is established by testimony abundantly sufficient. But let him remember, that if it be established it implies a comмMUNICATION FROM GOD TO MAN. WHO COULD INFORM NOAH? Why did not that great patriarch provide against fire?-against earthquakes?-against explosions? Why against A DELUGE?-why against WATER? If the Infidel will be honest with himself, he must say, this was the dictation of Deity; for only HE who made the world could predict the time, the means, the causes of this devastation; only HE could excite the hope of restoration, or suggest a method of deliverance.*

SECTION II.

MOSES informs us that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, from whom, according to his statements, all mankind are descended; and the very names of several of the earliest nations, such as the Canaanites, Assyrians, Elymœites, Lydians, Medes and Hebrews; the descendants of Canaan, Ashur, Elam, Lud, Madai, and Eber, the grandsons of Noah, corroborate to the letter, the facts recorded by Moses concerning the division of the earth among the descendants of that patriarch.

Sir William Jones, in his address on the origin of families and nations, holds the following language: "We see five races of men peculiarly distinguished, in the time of Mohammed, for their multitude and extent of dominion; but we have reduced them to three, because we can discover no more, that essentially differ in language, religion, manners, and other characteristics: now these three races how variously soever they may at present be dispersed and intermixed, must (if the preceding conclusions be justly drawn) have migrated originally from a central country;" again, he says "Thus, then, have we proved that the inhabitants of Asia, and consequently, as might be proved, of the whole earth, sprang from three branches of one stem, and that these branches have shot into their present state of luxuriance in a period comparatively short, is apparent from a fact universally acknowledged, that we find no certain monument, or even probable tradition of nations planted, empires and states raised, laws enacted, cities built, navigation improved, commerce encouraged, arts invented, or letters contrived above twelve, or at most, fifteen or six

⚫See Watson, and En. R. Knowledge.

teen centuries before the birth of Christ; and from another fact, which cannot be controverted, that seven hundred or a thousand years would have been fully adequate to the supposed propagation, diffusion and establishment of the human race." The same author further says, "The sons of the just and virtuous man, whose lineage was preserved from the general inundation, traveled, we are told, as they began to multiply, in three large divisions, variously subdivided; the children of Yafet seem, from the traces of Sclavonian names, and the mention of their being enlarged, to have spread themselves far and wide, and to have produced the race which, for want of a correct appellation, we call Tartarian; the colonies formed by the sons of HAM and SHEм, appear to have been nearly simultaneous, and among those of the latter branch, we find so many names incontestably preserved at this hour in Arabia, that we cannot hesitate in pronouncing them the same people, whom hitherto we have denominated Arabs; while the former branch, the most powerful and adventurous of whom were the progeny of CUSH, MISR, and RAMA (names remaining unchanged in Sanscrit, and highly revered by the Hindoos,) were, in all probability, the race which I call Indian. Of Cush the son of Ham, he says, "When we find the same words, letter for letter, and in a sense precisely the same, in different languages, we can scarce hesitate in allowing them a common origin; and not to depart from the example set before us, when we see CUSH or Cus (for the Sanscrit name also is variously pronounced) among the sons of BRAHMA, that is, among the progenitors of the HINDOOS, and at the head of an ancient pedigree preserved in the Ramayan; when we meet with his name again in the family of RAMA; when we know that the name is venerated in the highest degree, and given to a sacred grass described as a Poa by KOENIG, which is used with a thousand ceremonies in the oblations to fire, ordained by MENU, to form the sacrificial zone of the Brahmins, and solemnly declared in the Veda to have sprung up soon after the deluge, whence the Puranics consider it as the bristly hair of the boar which supported the globe; when we add that one of the seven dwipas or great peninsulas of this earth, has the same appellation, we can hardly doubt that CUSH or Moses, and Valmie, was the same personage and an ancestor of the Indian race.

The same author further states on this interesting subject, "From the testimonies adduced, it seems to follow, that the only human family after the flood, established themselves in the northern parts of Iran; that, as they multiplied, they were divided into three distinct

grees, of their common primary language, but agreeing severally on new expressions for new ideas; that the branch of YAFET was enlarged in many scattered shoots over the north of Europe and Asia, diffusing themselves as far as the western and eastern seas, and, at length, in the infancy of navigation, beyond them both; that they cultivated no liberal arts, and had no use of letters, but formed a variety of dialects, as their tribes were variously ramified; that, secondly, the children of HAM, who founded in Iran itself the monarchy of the first Chaldeans, invented letters, observed and named the luminaries of the firmament, calculated the known Indian period of four hundred and thirty-two thousand years, or an hundred and twenty repetitions of the saros, and contrived the old system of mythology, partly allegorical, and partly grounded on idolatrous venerations for their sages and lawgivers; that they were dispersed at various intervals, and in various colonies over land and ocean; that the tribes of MISER, CUSH and RAMA settled in Africa and India; while some of them, improving the art of sailing, passed from Egypt, Phenice and Phrygia, into Italy and Greece, which they found thinly peopled by former emigrants, of whom they supplanted some tribes and united themselves with others; whilst a swarm from the same hive moved by a northerly course into Scandinavia, and another by the head of the Oxus, and through the passes of the Imaus, into Casbqhar and Eighuz, Kata and Kboten, as far as the territories of Chin and Tancut, where letters have been used and arts immemorially cultivated; nor is it unreasonable to believe, that some of them found their way from the eastern isles into Mexico and Peru, where traces were discovered of rude literature and mythology analogous to those of Egypt and India; that, thirdly, the old Chaldean empire being overthrown by the Assyrians under CAYUMERS, other emigrations took place, especially into India; while the rest of Shem's progeny, some of whom had before, on the Red sea, peopled the whole of the Arabian peninsula, pressing close on the nations of Syria and Phenice; that, lastly, from all the three families were detached many bold adventurers of an ardent spirit and a roving disposition, who disdained subordination, and wandered in separate clans, till they settled in distant isles, or in deserts and mountainous regions; that, on the whole, some colonies might have. migrated before the death of their venerable progenitor; but that states and empires could scarce have assumed a regular form, till fifteen or sixteen hundred years before the christian epoch, and that for the first thousand years of that period we have no history unmixed