[68] The expressions in the latter part of this narration recall the blessing of Jacob, and suggests the possibility of the tradition having come through descendants of Esau.
[69] This is so much in tradition as to be a matter of common parlance—for instance, when the late Emperor of the French is depicted, this is the language which, upon a certain construction, appears most natural—“On the other side stands a phalanx of satirists, represented by Victor Hugo. The only colour on the palette of those artists is lamp black. Morally they paint the ex-Emperor as dark as a negro, array him in the livery of the devil, and then invoke the execration of history.”—Spectator, Sept. 17th, 1870.
[70] The italics are mine.
[71] The eye would be the very most apposite symbol for blackness, if we consider that blackness lingers there after the skin has become white, and, in the case of half-breeds, is the test of descent in gradations even beyond, I believe, the octoroon.
Captain King (“Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia,” ii. Append.) says, “That although there is the greatest diversity of words among the Australian tribes, the equivalent for ‘eye’ is common to them all.”
[72] Lenormant, “Manuel d’Histoire Ancienne,” i. 23, makes a similar suggestion as to this point—“La texte de la Bible n’a rien qui s’oppose formellement à l’hypothèse que Noè aurait eu, postérieurement au deluge, d’autres enfants que Sem, Cham, et Japhet, d’où seraient sorties les races qui ne figurent pas dans la généalogie de ces trois personnages.” But two objections seem to me to be fatal to this view. The races about whom this difficulty would be raised would be the red and black races: why should it be surmised that the supposed posterity of Noah, after the Deluge, should have this mark of inferiority? In the second place, it does seem to be formally opposed to Gen. x. 32—“These are the families of Noe, according to their peoples and nations. By these were the nations divided on the earth after the flood.”
The red races might perhaps be accounted for by Gen. xxv. 23–25.
[73] There appears to me, however, a text to which attention might be directed. We know that the Ethiopians were black, but in Amos ix. 7, where God is expressing His anger against His people, He says, “Are you not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel, saith the Lord.”
[74] Vide also ch. x., [p. 239]. The tradition that Phoroneus, “the father of mankind,” distributed the nations over the earth, idem nationes distribuit.