to be mistaken for any other. Profane history confirms the sacred. Thessaly once bore the name of Eolia; and we learn from Herodotus that one of the one hundred and twenty provinces of Persia, as they stood in the rolls of the Persian empire, was called Alysionenses; that it comprehended Eolia, which lies between Ionia and Phrygia; and that Eolus—whence Eolia—is a mere corruption of Elisha.
Egypt, one of the principal entrances into the great peninsula, now called Africa, still bears in Hebrew the name of Ham's second son. And Africa itself, called in scripture the land of Ham, was by the Greeks, apparently guided both by observation and its Hebrew name Cush, designated Ethiopia; which means literally Face-burning, and may be rendered the face-burning country. So early did the influence of climate begin to operate a change on the human frame; and so simply and intelligibly did the ancients account for that variety of complexion in the human body which, to modern philosophers, appears such a mystery.
Moses expressly tells us that the East, which points to India and China, became the inheritance of the descendants of Shem. His silence respecting the younger children of the great antediluvian patriarch,—those born to him after the flood—indicates that they had lost their distinctive character; either by being placed, for the purpose of instruction in revelation and divine things, under the guardianship and protection of the elder brother, as senior and superintending patriarch on his father's death; or, by voluntarily taking up their abode in the East among his family, to whom belonged the birthright and the supremacy. Mingling with them, both seem to have blended together, assuming by degrees, with some slight variety, the same family-likeness, and passing under the same name. Hence it is, that receiving such an accession, the family of Shem became much more numerous, than that of either Ham or Japheth.
Writers on Zoology have attempted to divide the inhabitants of the earth into five classes, insinuating as many different origins; but the fancifulness of their distinctions is equalled only by the puerility of their arguments. Even if history were silent, the distinguishing characteristics of the three great families of mankind are not darkly visible, but clear and discernible, as any other object on which the light of heaven shines. The red, bronze, or yellow colour, prevalent in Palestine, Persia, India, China, Australasia, and America; the woolly hair, black figure, flat front, and elongated visage, prevalent in Africa; and the white skin, finely formed head, and Circassian beauty, prevalent to the north of the Mediterranean and
