the primal land before the Flood. The Hindoos have long been considered a very ancient race; but this opinion is a mistake: a feud divided them from the main body of the Iranians, commonly called Persians, as late as 6000 B.C. The Zend contains only a record of primeval migrations, founding fourteen kingdoms, the last in the Punjaub. The ancestral Aryans left Iran proper, "the land of pleasantness," on account of a great convulsion of nature near the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes. This was on the slopes of Belur Tagh, between 40° and 37° north latitude, and 89° or 90° east longitude. Two months of summer to ten of winter describes the climate which they left.* The Zend traces the original catastrophe to water, ice, and upheaval; a part of our Scripture traces it to water only: but we must not forget the flames which guarded the gates of Eden, in the still older story.†

From the Vendidad we take the following abbreviated record of their movements:

1. They went north, to Samarcand, driven by a raging pestilence;

2. To Margiana, where they encountered wars and invading Cossacks;

3. To Bactria, where they found mosquitoes and poisonous plants;

4. To Nisaya, in Northern Parthia, where religious scepticism assailed them; 5. To Herat, where they encountered toil and poverty;

6. To Segestan-Dushak, where schism again assailed them;

7. To Caboul;

8. To Candahar, invaded by the terrible sin of pæderasty, or unnatural lust;

9. To Haraquaiti, where an apostacy, concerning the burial of the dead,

occurred;

10. To Hetumat, the classic Etymander, where sorcery prevailed;

11. To Northern Media, where schism began again;

12. To Khorassan, where the profane burning of the dead was introduced;

13. To Verena, or Ghilan, where illness assailed their women;

14. To the Punjaub, where they finally separated into Persians and Hindus. In Irania, Ary meant Lord; in Egypt, it kept the same signification. †The original seat of Zoroaster was in Bactria, where he ruled after the time of Menes. His Zend was called the Maga; but there was a great difference between his trinity of "thought, word, and deed," and the corrupted Magism. From the Zend we get a table like this:

Plutonic disturbance and primeval emigration
Gradual separation into Germans, Sclaves, &c.

Gradual extension of races, on to

B.C.

10,000

8,000

5,000

The two great formative branches of the human family show indelible marks of their common origin. The Semitic and Aryan commenced an independent progression at the very moment when Egypt became stationary. The condition of the Egyptians, before their separation from the primeval race, was stereotyped on the Nile. It will be remembered, that the Egyptians were the descendants of Kham or Chem, or, more popularly, Ham. We shall confine ourselves, as far as possible, to the use of the first term.

From this train of thought, and much evidence, which we must pass over until we come to the history of the Hebrews, we come to the following conclusions:

1. The patriarchal dates were true dates, — astronomic, historic, or geographic,- partly misunderstood by those who recorded them.

2. We can get at the meaning only by penetrating and throwing aside the misconceptions.

3. The Biblical record consists of two versions, - the version of the "Elohim," and the version according to Seth.

4. It begins in a purely ideal statement; but what follows contains reminiscences of thousands of years of primeval life.

5. Hebel, or Abel, the "thing of nought," vanishing away, belongs to the ideal sphere. He represents the subjugation of the mild shepherd races by the fierce Kossites, - dwellers in towns, Turanians descended from Cain.

6. The first epoch in history, therefore, is Turanian, represented in Scripture by the migration of Cain, who went sullenly out to build cities to the east of Eden.

7. Then followed what we may call the Middle Age of that primeval world. Cain left behind him the development of the races. Eastward went the warriors, westward the priests.

8. Then come the descent and predominance of conquering, overbearing Kossite races; its natural result in debauchery; and then the Flood. Great clearness is here thrown into the narrative, by putting the story of Nimrod into its right place, -before the Flood and the dispersion of the Semitic races; and by showing that Nimrod was no Cushite from the South,

but a Koshite, a mountaineer, a conclusion which the books of the Zend justify.

9. Then came the Flood: of its duration we know nothing certainly.

10. Then came the great Semitic emigration, beginning with Heber, the man who "crossed the river," the ancestor of the Hebrews. This emigration may have originated in antediluvian pressure, exerted by Kossite hordes under Nimrod.

11. Almost all nations have some traditions of the Flood, which retain a wonderful harmony. That of Abraham seems nearest to pure history.

12. Abraham's roots are Aryan.

13. The Semites exerted no influence in Egypt, except through the invading Hyksos.

14. The Egyptians, emigrating before the Flood, had no knowledge of it.

15. Vast hordes of Southern Palestinians, driven out of Egypt 1,700 B.C., were the real Pelasgi; in Semitic, Pelashet, or wanderers. They drove the Aryans westward, out of the Greek islands. Perhaps the convulsions which drove the Phoenicians from the five cities near the Dead Sea to the seacoast, had prepared the way. These emigrations made the channel through which Asiatic ideas were to penetrate the Greek mythology.

From these conclusions, we have the following approximate table of dates:

Antediluvian history. Formation of languages and peoples between the Creation and the Flood.

In the first age, Sinism was first deposited in North China. In its language, every syllable was a word, every word a picture. In its worship, the cosmic agencies and the souls of ancestors were adored.

Turanianism deposited itself in Thibet. Its language, like that of the South-American tribes, was a pure agglutination, from which particles soon originated.

Khamism deposited itself in Egypt. The roots and stems of language were formed, and hieroglyphs began.

Then came the Flood; and, just before it or with it, an emigration of Aryans from the regions of the Oxus and Jaxartes, and of Semites from the Euphrates and Tigris.

In the first period of the second age, the Aryans and Semites separate still farther in Asia; the invasion of Nimrod takes place; a watch-tower is built on the plains of Babylon; and the Aryans move into Bactria.

In the second period of the second age, the Aryans gradually separate into Kelts, Armenians, Iranians, Greeks, Sclaves, and Germans. The Northern Semites separate from the Southern, and a central Aryan civilization begins in Asia. The Aryans move to the Indus, the Chaldæans to Babylonia. Zoroaster appears about 3000 B.C. Babylon is built by the son of Belus. Abram is born, and moves toward Mesopotamia.

In the third age, not only does Abraham move into Canaan, but the convulsion in the neighborhood of the Dead

Sea drives the inhabitants of the five cities to the coast; and Tyrian chronology begins, and, by astronomic and other synchronistic points, establishes the era.

In the first period of the second age, Egypt forms its "nomes" or provinces, and the republican power in them comes to an end. They have their first priestly king; and then, in the second period, elective kings for 817 years. Then a double government, and the original worship of the sun develops into three forms, the worship of Seth, of Ra, and of Ammon.

In the third period of the second age, while Babylon is building, history begins in Egypt. Menes is on the throne, and the whole country under one government. The system of writing changes: the hieroglyph takes on a cursive character, and becomes hieratic. Animal worship begins, and the largest pyramids are built.

In the third age, while the descendants of Abraham are in Canaan, Sesortosis employs Joseph as his "shalith" in Egypt; and, under the pressure of the great famine, the tenure of land is changed throughout Egypt. This put it in the power of the kings to oppress their people. It was according to poetical justice, that, Joseph having advised and consummated this great iniquity, his people, in remote centuries, should smart beneath the power it conferred.

To resume: The first emigration from the Garden is described as moving east; and the emigrants are not shepherds, like Abel, but husbandmen, dwellers in towns. The Turanian language shows the first step; the Khamitic (ie., the Egyptian), the second. Khamism disappears slowly in Asia; but from the districts about the Euphrates; through Mesopotamia and Palestine, a body of people moved, of whom we know nothing except their language. This language, rediscovered in the "Book of the Dead," speaks to us in syllables that were ancient 4,000 years ago. From this language we discover that the emigration took place before the Flood, and that, by breaking up old ties of race, it opened a new historic consciousness to the emigrants. The shortest line from inorganic language to the organic is through the Chinese, the