one of the most celebrated, and yet the most mysterious of
nations. In the earliest traditions of nearly all the more
civilized nations of antiquity, the name of this distant people
is found. The annals of the Egyptian priests are full of them,
and the nations of inner Asia, on the Euphrates and Tigris, have
interwoven the fictions of the Ethiopians with their traditions
of the wars and conquests of their heroes; and, at a period
equally remote, they glimmer in Greek mythology. When the Greeks
scarcely knew Italy and Sicily by name, the Ethiopians were
celebrated in the verses of their poets, and when the faint gleam
of tradition and fable gives way to the clear light of history,
the lustre of the Ethiopians is not diminished."
Homer says of them that they were a "divided people dwelling at
the ends of the earth toward the setting and the rising Sun."
Although it is possible at the present time to discover very many
of the facts bearing upon the civilization of this ancient
people, it is impossible in the present condition of human
knowledge to discover when civilized life began on the earth.
Whether the ancient Arabians or Ethiopians who belonged to the
old Cushite race, and who are believed by many to be the most
ancient people of whom we have any trace, were the first
colonizers, or whether they were preceded by a still older
civilization, history and tradition are alike silent; yet the
fact seems to be tolerably well authenticated that this
enlightened race, now nearly extinct, carried civilization to
Chaldea more than seven thousand years B.C., that it colonized
Egypt, engrafted its own institutions in India, colonized
Phoenicia, and by its maritime and commercial enterprise,
introduced civilized conditions into every quarter of the globe.
Even in Peru, in Mexico, in Central America, and in the United
States are evidences of the old Cushite religion and enterprise.
Baldwin, commenting on the greatness of this remarkable people,
says that early in the period of its colonizing enterprise,
commercial greatness, and extensive empire, it established
colonies in the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates, which in
later ages became Barbary, Egypt, and Chaldea. The ancient
Cushite nation occupied Arabia and other extensive regions of
Africa, India, and Western Asia to the Mediterranean. While
remarking upon the vastness and antiquity of this old Cushite
race, Rawlinson says that they founded most of the towns of
