Central Asia, point so directly to the three great post diluvian patriarchs, that no doubt can be entertained relative either to the order of classification or the common origin of our race. Variety is essential to recognition, and therefore common to every order of created beings. Without variety creation would be defective. Its worlds, its classes of matter, animate and inanimate, and the different orders of intelligent beings it contains, would be undistinguished and undistinguishable. Persons and things would be alike incapable of identification, and would present us with nothing but a mass of congregated confusion. Hence nature, in obedience to an admirable and universal law, and in a manner known to none but herself, displays her endless powers of variation by diversifying, not only the genus and the species, but the individuals of the same class or tribe, and even those sprung from the same matrimonial union. But how conclusive soever the argument thence derived, I pass over the peculiar features and striking characteristics by which the three great families of man may be recognized and distinguished one from another. A single sentence from the lips of Noah, decides the point at issue: "Ham shall be a servant of servants, and Japheth shall dwell in the tents of Shem." Were there no peculiarities in the personal formation of the negro, the doom of slavery, so remarkably verified as it has been by the event, would prove the inhabitants of Africa to be the posterity of Ham: while the dominion of the Greeks and Romans anciently in Asia; the conquest of Palestine, Persia, India, and China at a later period, by the Tartars; the occupation of South America by the Spaniards and Portuguese; and the empires established and establishing in North America, India, and Australasia by the British, traversing the ocean thousands of miles for this very purpose, bear out the prediction of 4000 years, and assure us that, when the earth was divided amongst the three great patriarchical families, the sons of Japheth took up their abode in the North, and that the inhabitants of Central Asia, India, China, America, and Australasia, are the descendants of Shem.
After consulting the sacred records, a glance at the map of the world will be sufficient to convince the candid and the intelligent. Should a lingering doubt remain, relative to the countries which lie beyond the Atlantic and the Indian, it will vanish on a moment's reflection. The geographical position of Japheth in Europe, Ham in Africa, and Shem in Asia, will lead to correct conclusions respecting the peopling of the continent discovered by Columbus in the West, and that found by Hartog in the South; while the vicinity of these continents to Asia, and their conquest and occupation by the descendants of
