south, and built a town near the then mouth of the river Jordan, which was named Ham, and seems to have been a place of importance in the time of the Jewish king. His son, Chus, or Cush, settled near the northern shore of the Persian Gulf, and the country still retains the name of Chus-istan, or the settlement of Chus among the natives. By the Greeks it was called Susiana, and by the Hebrews Shushan. The principal town stood on the banks of the Ulai, or Euleus, but its position is not perfectly defined.

About fifty years after the judgment, given by Noah, in which he declared the destiny of the different branches of his posterity, Nimrod, a son of Cush, left his father's territory, and travelled westward with a colony, that cannot easily be calculated at more than nine thousand persons. When he arrived at the plain of Shinar, he found Ashur, the son of Shem, beginning a settlement. He took possession of Ashur's improvements, and, having driven him farther up the Euphrates, settled in his place. Ashur built Ninevah, called by the Greeks Hierapolis. Afterward he built on the banks of the Tigris, another Ninevah, which became the capital of Assyria, and is now known by the name of Mousul.

Nimrod built a town, and, having made large preparations, set about erecting a great tower, which from the scripture account is usually called the tower of Babel, but in other books is denominated the temple of Belus. Though Ham and his posterity had been denied any territorial allotment, and were made dependent on the other branches of mankind, yet Nimrod, in defiance of his ancestor's denunciation, endeavored to establish himself by force. A divine interposition however defeated his intention, by confounding the speech of his party. They understood the same words in different senses, and every ambiguity became a source of vexation. Whoever had an impediment in his pronunciation, which obliged him to substitute letters better adapted to his organs, than the true ones, made use of different words, and was perpetually misunderstood. The foolish situation, to which they were reduced by this mean, obliged them to separate, and to abandon the enterprize. Several of their principal men led off

their clans toward Canaan and Egypt, which countries were settled soon after this event. The tower was called Babel by the people of the neighbouring states by way of derision, but Nimrod's followers availed themselves of its resemblance to another word, denoting its level situation, and adopted the name. Notwithstanding the defection of his principal officers, Nimrod continued there, and, dividing his party into four unequal parcels, built four towns, of which Babel, or Babylon, was the chief, and became a place of great eminence. The tower or temple of Belus, as it was afterward called, was improved as a seat of science, till the place became subject to the Greeks under Alexander and his successors about three centuries before the christian æra.

*The Hindoo books make Noah and his descendents, as far down as Raamah, the son of Cush, their earliest kings. Raamah is called by them Bali Raamah, and they give us a pretty good account of his progress in India, and of the towns, that he built. He is represented with a club and a lion's skin, and is the oriental Hercules. His deification by his ti tle, Bali, was, according to Sir William Jones, the origin of the worship of the Belus of Babylon, and the Baal of Syria. The seat of his government was Ayodha, or Audh, now called Oude, and his empire comprehended the hither India.

Canaan and Mizraim gave their respective names to a part of Syria and to Egypt. They were brothers of Cush, and their settlements were made in the second century after the flood. Probably the attempts of Shem's family to recover the possession of Babylon, which in a few years proved successful, hastened the settlement of Africa and the neighbouring parts of Asia. The posterity of Cush retained for a while however a superiority in the countries extending from the mouth of the Indus to the sources of the Nile. The Asiatic part of this territory was denominated Cusha proper, and

* See As. Res. vol. i. 41. iii. 432. and other essays in that collection, and the tenth chapter of Genesis, where Moses declares the different settlements to have been derived and named from the persons, enumerated by him. They, who want more particular information, may consult with advantage Welft' Sacred Geography and the Phaleg of Bochart,

Abyssinia was called Cusha without. Both of them are translated by the name Ethiopia in the Old Testament. On the expulsion of Nimrod's party from Babylon many fled into Africa, where we find the Gihon, Babylon, Shinar, and Meru of Asia, applied to the Niger, which still retains the name of Guin, Babylon near the present Cairo, the kingdom of Sennar, and the peninsula of Meroe. This subject might be pursued more minutely, but our present intention is only to furnish a specimen of those points, in which the investigators of antiquity have pretty much agreed. It took however more than two centuries to extend the sovereignty of the Assyrians to the confines of Egypt, and it was not till Abraham was ad¬ vanced in life, that Chedorlaomer set up a precarious dominion over the land of Canaan.

We find the settlement of Ham's posterity all along the road from Babel to Africa. Sidon, a grandson of Ham, and cousin of Nimrod, built a town at the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean, which is still known by the name of its founder. Jebus, a brother of Sidon, built a city, which he called Salem, but his own tribe and his neighbours called it Jebus. After it came into the possession of the Hebrews, it was called Jerusalem, and by this name it is now known to Europeans. The orientals, who are in possession of it, call the place El Cods, or THE HOLY. Both Sidon and Jerusalem were built about the time with Babel, or soon after it. They were removed the same number of degrees of descent from Noah, and probably made their settlements about the same time with Nimrod, that is about the year of the world 1800, or very nearly a century and a half from the flood. Rollin in his ancient history states Babylon to have been taken by Alexander 331 years before Christ.* other place he tells us, that Calisthenes, a philosopher in Alexander's court, gave Aristotle an account of astronomical observations, made there, including 1903 years. These numbers added together make the sum of two thousand two hundred and thirty four, and according to the commonly received

* See Rollin's chron. table in Anc. Hist. vol. vii. also v. ii. p. 243

In an

chronology will begin the series of observations so long before the birth of Christ, and about 114 years after the flood. Shem and his son, Ashur, had settled in that country a few years before this. But, as Moses tells us, after that Ashur went from this same country, and built Nineveh, it appears most probable, that he was expelled by Nimrod's invasion between thirty and forty years after the time, when the series is said to have begun. It is not probable, that the observations were of any great importance; but such, as the account is, and such use, as has been made of it towards regulating chronology, are now before the reader.

Mizraim, soon after the dispersion of Babel, that is soon after the completion of the eighteenth century from the creation, took possession of Egypt. He is commonly supposed to be the same with Menes, the first king of Egypt. Herodotus says "the name of their first king was Menes, in whose "reign the whole of Egypt, except the province of Thebes, " was one extended marsh. No part of all that district, "which is now situate beyond the Moris, was then to be

seen, the distance between which lake and the sea is a "journey of seven days."* Hence we collect, that, at the time of the first postdiluvian colony being planted there, the whole of lower Egypt was under water; and this was nearly two centuries after the flood. He is said to have confined the river to its upper channel, in which it now flows, by a dike above Memphis, and thus to have rendered fertile the lands in that vicinity.

In one century more they had begun to send out colonies from Egypt. Commentators are not fully agreed in them all. Some of them are however perfectly and others probably ascertained. The Pathrusim are supposed to have settled at Thebes in upper Egypt. The Casluhim probably settled in the middle region, and the Caphtorim in the Delta, which had then emerged. These two last are here mentioned only, as probable conjectures, and agreeing best with all the places, in which those names occur in the scripture. The * Beloe's Herod, vol. i. p. 219.

Philistines settled on the south part of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and spread over the isthmus, which had now united Asia and Africa. Moses says the Philistines came from the Casluhim, and their settlement extended from Azzah to Hazzerim, or, as we should call those towns, from Gaza to Adjeroute. This description comprehends the space between the Mediterranean and the Red Seas. As both Caphtorim and the Philistines were colonies from the Casluhim, and these last only descendents from the colony of Mizraim, we can hardly allow less than a century for the planting of those colonies, which will bring us down to the end of the third century from the flood, or about 1950 years from the creation. The country of Egypt had then acquired nearly its present form, and the Mediterranean had nearly contracted to its present shape and extent. At the same time the flat land, surrounding the Arabian peninsula, and bounded on the land side by the mountains, was deserted by the sea, and the flat shore of Mekran, between the Persian Gulf and the Indus, became, like the shore of the Red Sea, a dry and barren desert.

While Egypt was planted in the manner, that has been stated, and Raamah, the son of Cush, was planting colonies in India, Havilah, another son of Cush, settled near the sources of the Indus, in the country now called Cashmir, and gave his name to that territory. His country was bounded easterly by the Hyphasis, or Phison.*

These descendents of Ham, who first took possession of those countries in Asia as well as Africa, appear to have been proper negroes. The ancient statues and reliefs, now found in India, represent them with the badges of royalty, but with negro features and woolly heads. The mountaineers in many parts of that peninsula still show strong marks of their origin, though many of them, by mixture with the strait haired Indians, have deviated from their first description, and appear to be of a mixed breed. The proper and unmixed negroes are now found in no other part of India, but in the Andaman islands in the bay of Bengal.†