modern to be important out of towns on tbe seaboard, tbe combined,
influences of European captives, at Salee, Tangiers, Algiers, Tunis,
Tripoli, Bengazi, and other privateering principalities ; which circumstances,
in the maritime cities, have blended every type of man that
could be kidnapped around the Black Sea, Mediterranean, and Eastern
Atlantic, by Barbary pirates. [As an illustration — Mr. Gliddon
tells us, that, in 1830, just after the French conquest of Algiers, the
hold of a Syrian brig, in which he sailed from Alexandria to Sidon,
was occupied by one wealthy Algerine family, fleeing from Gallic
heresies to Arabian IsIàm, anywhere. Exclusive of servants and
slaves, there were at least fifty adults and minors, under the control
of a patriarchal grand or greatgrandfather. Of course, our informant
saw none of the grown-up females unveiled ; but, while the
patriarch and some of the sons were of the purest white complexion,
their various children presented every hue, and every physical diversity,
from the highest Circassian to a Guinea-Uegro. In this case,
no Arabic interpreter being needed, it was found that each individual
of the worthy corsair’s family, unprejudiced in all things, save hatred
towards Christendom in general and Frenchmen in particular, had
merely chosen females irrespectively of color, race, or creed.—J. C. H.]
H odgson states —
“ The Tuarycks are a white people, of the Berber race. . . . The Mozabicks are a remarkably
white people, and are mixed with Bedouin Arabs. . . . The Wadreagans and Wurgelans
are of a dark bronze, with woolly hair . . . are certainly not pure Caucasian, like the Berber
race in general. . . . There is every probability that the Kushites, Amalekites, and Kah-
tanites^ or Beni-Yoktàn Arabs, had, in obscure ages, sent forward tribes into Africa. But
the first I, historic proof of emigration of the Aramean or Shemitic race into this region is
that of the Canaanites of Tyre and of Palestine. This great commercial people settled
Carthage, and pushed their traders to the Pillars of Hercules.” 248
Upon these various branches of a supposed common stock, there
have been engrafted some shoots of foreign origin ; for, amidst a uniformity
of language, there exist extraordinary differences of color and
of physical traits — at the same time, are we sure of this alleged
uniformity of speech itself? How, we repeat, history affords no well-
attested example of a language outliving a clearly-defined physical
type; and, in a preceding chapter, we fully instanced how the Jews,
scattered for 2000 years over all climates of the earth, have adopted
the language of every nation among whom they sojourn — thus
affording one undeniable proof of our assertion, not to mention many
others one might draw from less historical races.
Mr. Hodgson is a strenuous advocate of an extreme antiquity for
the Berbers, or Libyans : —
“ Their history is yet to be investigated and written. I yet maintain the opinion advanced
some years ago, that these people were the terree geniti — the aboriginal inhabitants
of Egypt, prior to the historic or monumental era, and before the Mizraimites and their
descendants, the Copts.” ^
In our Part H., these skilful inferences are singularly reconciled
with the monuments and history, and from an altogether different
point of view. When we remember how, in Hebrew personifications,
Mizraim was the grandson of Ho a h , and how Lepsius traces the
Egyptian Empire back nearly 4000 years before Christ, a claim of
such antiquity for the Berbers is certainly a high one, although,
according to our belief, not extravagant; for we regard the Berbers
as a primitive type, and therefore as old as any men of our geological
period. Hodgson confirms his statement, by abundant proofs, that
“ the grammatical structure of the Berber dialects is everywhere the!
same;” and, in allusion to the affinities among these languages,
avers: —
“ Yet, with all this identity of a peculiar class of words and similarity of some inflections,
adjunct particles, and formations,— the three most ancient and historical languages, Arabic,
Berber, and Coptic, are essentially distinct.”
With perfect propriety, our friend might have added the Chinese
speech, which is. equally peculiar, and can be traced monumentally
farther back than either the Arabic or the Berber — if not, certainly,
so far as that ante-monumental tongue which is prototype of the
Coptic. I t seems to us, that no one can read P a u t h ie r ’s several
works on Chinese history, language, and literature, without coinciding
in this, opinion; and every one can verify that the languages of
America, according to G a l l a t in , D upo n c ea u, and other. qualified
judges, are radically distinct from every tongue, ancient or modern,
of the Old Continent.
Our ethnological sweep over the African Continent, from the Cape,
of Good Hope northwards to the Mubias on the right hand, and to
Barbary on the left, incomplete as it is — wearisome, to many readers,
as it may be—has brought us to the confines of Egypt. In that
most ancient of historical lands we propose to halt, for a season;
devoting the next chapter to its study. But, by way of succinct
recapitulation of some results we think the present chapter has
elicited, we would inquire of the candid reader, whether,. at the
present moment, the human races indigenous to Africa do not present
themselves, on a map, so to say, in layers ? Whether the most
southern of its inhabitants, the Hottentots and Bushmen, are not the
lowest types of humanity therein found ? And lastly, whether, in the
ratio of our progress towards the Mediterranean, passing successively
through the Caffre, the Megro, and the Foolah populations, to the
Abyssinian and Mubian races on the east, and to the Atalantic Berber
■