hiopia was the first established country on the earth,
and the Ethiopians were the first who introduced the worship of the Gods
and who established laws."(65)

65) Quoted by John D. Baldwin, Prehistoric Nations, p. 62.

Heeren in his researches says:

"From the remotest times to the present, the Ethiopians have been 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