fowl, and offered burnt offerings. Fourthly, the Chinese derive the name of" Fohi from his oblation; and Moses gives Noah his name upon account of the grant of the creatures for the use of men, which he obtained by his offering. Lastly, the Chinese history supposes Fohi to have settled in the province of Xeusi, which is the north-west province of China, and near to Ararat, where the ark rested. But, sixthly, the history we have of the world does necessarily suppose, that these eastern parts were as soon peopled, and as populous as the land of Shinaar. For in a few ages, in the days of Ninus and Semiramis, about three hundred years after the dispersion of mankind, the nations that came of that dispersion attacked the inhabitants of the East with their united force; but found the nations about Bactria, and the parts where we suppose Noah settled, fully able to resist and repel all their armies, as I shall observe hereafter in its proper place. Noah, therefore, came out of the ark near Saga Scythia, on the hills beyond Bactria, north of India. Here he lived, and settled a numerous part of his posterity, by his counsels and advice. He himself planted a vineyard, lived a life of retirement, and after having seen his offspring spread around him, died in a good old age. It were much to be wished that we could attain a thorough insight into the antiquities and records of these nations, if there be any extant. As they spread down to India

"Couplet's Coufutius. Prooem. p. 38. 76.

south, and farther east into China; so it is probable they also peopled Scythia, and afterwards the more Northern continent; and if America be any where joined to it, perhaps all that part of the world came from these originals. But we must now speak of that part of Noah's descendants which travelled from the East.

At what time these men left Noah, we are no where informed; probably not until the number of mankind was increased. Seventy years might pass, before they had any thought of leaving their great ancestor; and by that time mankind might be multiplied to hundreds, and they might be too many to live together in one family, or to be united in any scheme of polity, which they were able to form or manage; and so a number of them might have a mind to form a separate society, and to journey and settle in some distant country.

From Ararat to Shinaar is about twelve hundred miles. We must not, therefore, suppose them to have got thither in an instant. The nature of the countries they passed over, nay, I might say the condition the earth itself must then be in, full of undrained marshes and untracked mountains, over-run with trees and all sorts of rubbish of seventy or eighty years growth, without curb or culture, could not afford room for an open and easy passage to a company of travellers. Besides, such travellers as they, were not likely to press forwards with any great expedition; an undetermined multitude, looking for no particular place of habitation, were likely to fix in many, and to remove as they found inconveniences.

Let us, therefore, suppose their movements to be such as Abraham made afterwards, short journies, and abodes here and there, until in ten or twelve years they might come to Shinaar, a place in all appearance likely to afford them an open and convenient country for their increasing families.

And thus about eighty years after the Flood, according to the Hebrew computation, A. M. 1736, they might come to the plain of Shinaar. They were now out of the narrow passages and fastnesses of the mountains, had found an agreeable country to settle in, and, thought here to fix themselves and their posterity. Ambition is a passion extremely incident to our first setting out in the world-no aims seem too great, no attempts above or beyond us. it was with these unexperienced travellers, who had no sooner determined where to settle, but they resolved to make the place remarkable in all ages, to build a tower which should be the wonder of the world, and preserve their names to the end of it. They set all hands to the work, and laboured in it, it is thought, for some years; but, alas! the first attempt of their vanity and ambition, became a monument of their folly and weakness. GOD confounded their language in the midst of their un

T

According to the fragment in Eusebius in Chron. they began to build their tower A. M. 1736; apžдuevo. (he says) $425 ετες οικοδομείν τον πύργον, in which number there is an erident mistake, & instead of a, it should be ayλ5.

dertaking, and hereby obliged them to leave off their project, and to separate from one another. If we suppose them to spend nineteen or twenty years in settling and building, before their language was confounded; the division of the earth must be placed A. M. 1757, about one hundred and one years after the Flood, when Peleg the son of Eber was born; for the name Peleg was given him, because" in his time the earth was divided. And thus we have brought the history of mankind to a second great and remarkable period. I shall carry it no further in this book, but only add some account of the nature and origin of language in general, and of the confusion of it here spoken of.

First, it will, I think, be allowed me, that man is the only creature in the world who has the use of language. The fables we meet in some ancient writers, of the languages of beasts and birds, and particularly of elephants, are but fables.* The creatures are as much beneath speaking, as they are beneath reasoning. They may be able to make some faint imperfect attempts towards both; they may have a few simple

w Gen. x. 25.

The author of the latter Targum upon Esther reports, that Solomon understood the language of the birds, and sent a bird with a message to the Queen of Sheba; and Mohammed was silly enough to believe it, for we have much the same story in his Alcoran. See Walton Prolegom. 1,

sec. 5.

ideas of the things which concern them; and they may be able to form a few sounds, which they may repeat over and over, without variation, to signify to one another what their natural instincts prompt them to; but what they can do of this sort is not enough for us to say they have the use of language. Man, therefore is, properly speaking, the only conversible creature in the world. The next enquiry must be, how he came to have this ability?

There have been many writers who have attempted to account for the original of language. Diodorus Siculus and Vitruvius, imagined that men at first lived like beasts, in woods and caves, forming only strange and uncouth noises, until their fears caused them to associate together; and that upon growing acquainted with one another, they came to correspond about things, first by signs, then to make names for them, and in time to frame and perfect a language; and that the languages of the world are therefore divers, because different companies of men happening thus together, would in different places form different sounds or names for things, and thereby cause a different speech or language about them. It must be confessed that this is an ingenious conjecture, and might be received as probable, if we were to form our notions of the origin of mankind, as these men did from our own, or other people's fancies. But since we have a history which informs us that the begin

a

y Hist. Lib. 1.

Viz. that of Moses.

* Architec. lib. 2. c. 21.