[44]. The learned Dr. Beke reverses the route, and supposes that the “Cushite descendants of Ham” first settled on the western side of the Arabian Peninsula, crossed thence into Ethiopia, and descending the Nile, became the Egyptians of after times.—Origines Biblicæ, 1, p. 162.
[45]. I use the terms Libyan and Ethiopian as they are handed down to us from antiquity. “Speaking with all the precision I am able,” says Herodotus, “the country I have been describing is inhabited by four nations only; of these two are natives and two are strangers. The natives are the Libyans ([Greek: Dibyes]) and the Ethiopians, ([Greek: Aithiopes]); one of which possesses the northern, the other the southern parts of Africa. The strangers are the Phoenicians and the Greeks.”—Melpomene, 197. In the days of Herodotus nomad Libyans still inhabited the vicinity of Avaris.
[46]. I use the word aboriginal in this place with some reservation. It has been supposed by learned authorities that Africa was peopled by Negroes before the Hamitic tribes entered that country. I do not suppose Ham to have been the progenitor of the Negro race; and, with Dr. Wiseman, Mr. Lawrence and many others, I regard as a “conjecture” in Science, that doctrine which would attribute the physical gradations between the white man and the Negro to any other natural process than that of direct amalgamation.—Lawrence, Lectures on Zoology, 8th edit. p. 264. Wiseman, Lectures, 2d edit. p. 158. Beke, Origines Biblicæ, Tom. I., p. 162.
[47]. These Letters, which are addressed to Peter S. Duponceau, Esq., are contained in the fourth volume of the Transactions of this Society; and to this source the reader is referred for a mass of interesting details which is necessarily excluded in this place. The valuable communications of Mr. Shaler, also addressed to Mr. Duponceau, are published in the second volume of the same work.
[48]. “The phrase a shepherd fed his flock, is thus rendered in that language:—amiksa iksa thikhsi. These words, moreover, constitute a beautiful illustration of the genius of the language. In amiksa we have the formative particle am; and in thikhsi there is the feminine prefix th, a peculiarity alike of the Berber and the Coptic. The prefixes and suffixes t, th, are Berber indications throughout the whole extent of north Africa.” Vide also Hornemann, Voyage, Vocab. p. 431.
[49]. In Jeremiah Cush and Phut are names of African nations; while in hieroglyphics Libya is called Nephaiat, the “country of the nine bows.” The root of Nephaiat being Phut (in Coptic a bow) connects the Libyans with Phut, the son of Ham, (Gen. x. 6,) and confirms the affiliation of the Libyans and Egyptians. See Gliddon, Anc. Egypt, p. 25, 27, 41.
[50]. Sketches of Algiers, p. 91. Capt. Lyon’s observations are to the same purpose. Trav. p. 109.—Denham and Clapperton, p. 73.
[51]. Denham and Clapperton, Introd. p. 67. To give some idea of the number of the Tuaricks, these gentlemen mention that no less than two thousand were executed at Sackatoo, in Houssa, on a single occasion, for a predatory irruption into the territories of the Negro sultan of that country.—Journey from Kano to Sackatoo, p. 107.
[52]. Ibid. p. 941, 213, 237, 263, 315.
[53]. Denham and Clapperton, p. 50. See also Hornemann, Voy. en Afrique, p. 147.—All the Tibboo tribes appear to be Negroes modified by intermixture with the Arabs and Berbers who surround them.