Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

fairer people by Mount Atlas, and an extensive desert, for at least fifty centuries, are after all, not absolutely black, but so near it, that .no other epithet can so well express their colour. As to other distinctions of hair, noses, lips, &c. they are certainly shrivelled by the same influence of the sun, though we cannot so easily account for it. The inhabitants of Indostan make a near approach to the colour of the negroes; but having always lain open to a mixture of fairer people from the north, by whom they have been frequently conquered, they and the Moors differ but little in point of complexion. As for the intertropical Americans, of a colour between dark olive and black, they always lay open, to a mixture of people both from the north and the south, and had their air perpetually tempered by cold winds from the snowy tops of the Andes. Climate and food make considerable differences among both blacks and whites of different countries; between black and black in some countries, and white and white in others. But, what should put a final end to this forced and futile controversy, is, that the males and females of all distinctions among rational animals, on cohabitation, produce a fruitful offspring, and no mules, as is ever the case between different species of brutes. Thus, I hope, it clearly appears, that the horrid opinion of the aforesaid lord, and of some others, who echo his barbarous philosophy, carries with it no shew of reason, much less of that benevolence, with which infidelity hath long affected to plume itself. If man to man is no more akin, than tiger to wolf, and if wealth and poverty, lordship and peasantry, set us still at a greater distance, than white and black, which I am sure they do, it will be a difficult matter to prove, that philosophical benevolence can have any right to come in competition with Christian charity, which, founding itself on a natural brotherhood, unites us all into one body of Christ. Is then commercial barbarity, which for a long time hath encouraged one part of mankind to buy and sell another, examining all their limbs, and looking into their mouths, as into those of horses, to make a judgment of their age and soundness, going to establish itself on philosophical principles, and among a people, not unacquainted with the name of Christ? Most horrible indeed! Woe to that country, whose pride and luxury are supported by such a commerce, and that commerce by such philosophy!

17. Another attack on the credit of Moses as an historian, similar to the former, originates from Moses himself, who tells us, that Cain went into the land of Nod from the face of his father

Adam, and there built a city. From hence the infidels conclude, there were Pre-Adamites, or Co-Adamites at least. As to Pre-Adamites, the supposition of such is nonsense in itself. Men before the first man is too gross a solecism to be palmed on any historian, for Moses says, that Adam called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all flesh, and calls his first man by the name of Adam; whereas, had there been another man prior to him, he might just as well have taken up the generation of mankind from that other, as from the husband of Eve and father of Cain. Besides, the Pre-Adamites of infidels must have been created before there was a world for them to live upon. But as to Co-Adamites, or another species of mankind, formed about the same time with Adam, a thing not impossible, Moses absolutely precludes the fact, in setting Eve forward as the mother of all the human race. I have certainly as good a right to quote Moses for Moses, as any man can have to quote him against himself. Take which side we will in this argument, we must ground ourselves on Moses, for we have none to quote, but him. But now, as to Co-Adamites, the vulgar chronology sends Cain into the land of Nod in the year of the world 125, or at most in 139. This the infidel says, was too early for the peopling of that distant country, if there were in the world none but the posterity of Adam and Eve. This chronology, however disputed, as it really is, and that on good grounds, affords time enough for a considerable progeny in the single line of Adam and Eve, who were commanded and enabled, to increase and multiply, so as to people a small extent of country in one hundred and twenty-five

Now it is not so much as intimated, how far the land of Nod was from the place of Adam's abode. It was probably but five or six miles. Neither are we told, of how many houses the city consisted, which Cain built. In the first ages, when every father was a prince, and governed his family patriarchally, the bounds of his little community were very much circumscribed, and his subjects few. In those days, and for thousands of years afterward, every association, though exceedingly limited as to numbers, was called a city, because governed by a police of its own. The infidel himself does not expect to hear of a Babylon or Rome at that time. From this he flies to America, and insists, that so extensive a country could not have been peopled, as it was found to be when the Europeans began to settle in it, by the posterity of Noah. The Atlantic ocean was too wide for

the navigation of early ages, and it is but rational to believe, that it was as early inhabited, as the other three parts of the world. Very early, no doubt, it was; but how early, no mortal in any part of the world can so much as guess. A great number of very learned writers have furnished us with, I believe, fifty or sixty opinions, not touching the time, but the mode, of peopling America, all laying it down as a maxim, that Noah was the ancestor of the native Americans. I shall not give myself the trouble of canvassing these opinions, whereof I think there is but one which merits notice. It was certainly a matter, within the bounds of possibility, for either the north-western inhabitants of Europe, or the north-eastern of Asia, to have passed into the north of America, at any time when they found themselves uncomfortably situated in their old place of abode. If the cold in so high a latitude seems to forbid the migration, it may as well be thought to facilitate it by furnishing a bridge of ice and frozen snow to pass on. Traverses not immensely easier, nor less bold, are by the help of rein-deer, still made in Lapland and Samoedia, on parts of the gulf of Finland, and the White sea, as well as over extensive tracts of land, deeply covered with snow. It is hard to say how early the Norwegian Laplanders, Islanders, and Greenlanders, living wholly on fish, might, in quest of this necessary article, have passed, or by the winds been forced to pass, from one of these countries to the other. Who can tell however, whether the passage from Kamskatka to California might not have encouraged an Asiatic migration in a better manner? Or as islands in the ocean are every age rising, or falling, who can say, there were none of old, now sunk, which might have lain in the course of such migration, and served as step-stones to an imperfect navigation? But here having mentioned, not begged, the supposition of several small islands, swallowed by the sea, I must not forget the proof which may be given, and ought to be insisted on, of one great island, or part, if we will, of a continent, which might have carried the posterity of Noah to America with safety and convenience, as speedily as they could think of making the journey. In the Timæus of Plato, Solon is said to have heard from an Egyptian priest, that there was in the old archives of his country mention made of an island, as large as Asia and Europe, called Atlantis, lying so near to the westward of the latter, that its inhabitants, invading this part of the world, had carried all before them, till they came to Greece, when news was

brought them that their whole island was sunk in the sea by an earthquake. Although this account is a little too extraordinary to be merely matter of invention, and although the sea wherein this very extensive track of land was said, somehow or other, to have been swallowed up, hath time out of mind been called the Atlantic ocean; yet, I confess, it had in my mind the air of a fable, and the rather, as it originated from an Egyptian record, until the time of that earthquake which destroyed Lisbon; which shook all the English colonies in North America, as far westward as the Apalachian mountains, the whole Atlantic, and all Europe. This proves to demonstration, that a cavern there still is under all the aforesaid sea and lands, which gave room for the rarified air and water to produce this enormous phenomenon. Over this the Atlantic lands might have stood as a roof, which thrown down by an earthquake, were covered by the sea, but supported by mountains, standing here and there on the floor of the cavern, and some higher than the rest, directly under the British and other Atlantic islands, yet extant, leaves still underneath a vacuity, sufficient for the play of those vapours, which, in our time, have acted with a force so powerful and extensive. It was perhaps not improbable, that the retreat of the sea, on all the shores of the world was chiefly owing to the possession, taken by the waters, of the space formerly occupied by the Atlantic. The cavern underneath, though still of vast depth, hath probably lost as much of its vacuity, as the waters of the ocean have since taken possession of over its roof, so as nearly to equal the spaces lost below and gained above. The soundings, which, it is said are found, all along, from the west of Ireland to the banks southward of Newfoundland, do still farther encourage the notion of land, sunk, in that track, under the sea, and nevertheless somehow supported there, to a height, not often found in such extensive parts of the ocean. This idea, built a great deal more on fact than theory, may help to realize the Egyptian record, and account for the peopling of America, whereof the Atlantis might have made a part, or at least have lain as contiguous to it on that side, as it did on this to Europe. Be this as it will, the moose-deer, the fossil bones of elephants, and many other things, found both in Europe and America, enforce a probability, that a passage once lay open for other creatures, as well as for men, to form a communication between these two parts of the world. Nay it is averred, that some conformity, hath been found, even in particu

lar words, between the language of the old Irish, and those of the inhabitants about Hudson's bay, Terra-Labradore, and NovaScotia. It were to be wished, that the Swedes, Danes, Irish and English, would look a little farther into this matter, than they have yet done. There are customs, too remote from nature, and too extraordinary, for whole nations, that never had any communication with one another, to have gone into, for instance, circumcision in parts of Great Tartary, where the coldness of the climate did not prescribe the practice. One, still farther from the common road of invention, is a custom, that hath obtained, from time immemorial, among the Laplanders, and among the native Irish, who in some places still practise it, which is this; in some disorders, and to make themselves hardy, they build a sort of oven (some of them I have been shewn) wherein they set a large stone, almost red hot, beside this stone the patient sits down stark naked, and shutting the enclosure, so as to let in but little air, continues there until he is half liquified into sweat, and then rushing out, rolls himself in snow, or in cold water, always close by his oven. As this is the method of hardening iron, I do not recommend it to any but iron men. However, the same method of cure is universally practised by all the northern Americans, who can as easily and exactly tell you when and where Æneas's nurse was buried, as when this custom first obtained among them. It is however a clear point with me, that they must have brought it with them from the east. Would, I could say, when, and prove it so as that an infidel must be forced to believe it, I say, forced, because nothing less would do with him. The American men appearing without beards hath been a sufficient hint with infidels to prove them to be of a different species from the Noachida, and will as justly prove us to be so when shaved, for the Americans pluck out the hairs of their beards with little instruments, similar to our tweezers. This however may file with their other arguments for the same purpose.

18. Having in the former paragraph intimated, that the sea hath observably retired from the land, all round the world, excepting, I mean, between or near the tropics, lest I should seem to have half begged a point, relative to the argument I was then handling, I think it proper to be somewhat more particular on that surprising subject. The reports made by travellers, of any observation, which I have either heard or read, uniformly vouch for this retreat of the sea. These were, by no means, necessary to

« AnteriorContinuar »