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
Western Asia. The vast commercial system which formed a connecting link
between the various countries of the globe, was created by this people,
the great manufacturing skill and unrivalled maritime activity of the
Phoenicians which extended down to the time of the Hellenes and the
Romans having been a result of the irgenius. It was doubtless during the
supremacy of the ancient Cushite race that a knowledge of astronomy was
developed and that the arts of life were carried to a high degree of
perfection. However, through the peculiar influences which were brought
to bear upon human experience, this knowledge, which was bequeathed
to their descendants or to the nations which they had created, was
subsequently lost or practically obscured, only fragments of it having
been preserved from the general ruin.

Within these fragments have been preserved in India certain evidences of
a profound knowledge of Nature, or of the at present unknown forces in
the universe, a demonstration of which, in our own time, would probably
be looked upon as a miraculous interposition of supernatural agencies.

Regarding the refinements and luxuries of this ancient people, Diodorus
Siculus declares that they flowed in streams of gold and silver, that
"the porticoes of their temples were overlaid with gold, and that the
adornments of their buildings were in some parts of silver and gold,
and in others of ivory and precious stones, and other things of great
value."

From various observations, it is plain that the Etrurians represented
a stage of civilization far in advance of the Pelasgians who founded
Rome--a race which, although superior in numbers, arms, and influence,
were, when compared with this more ancient people, little better than
barbarians.(66)

66) It is thought that as early as the nineteenth century B.C. the
Pelasgians or Pelargians went to Aenonia, or Ionia. It was a detachment
of this people which, according to Herodotus, captured a number of
Athenian women on the coast of Africa, lived with them as wives, and
raised families by them, but, "because they differed in manners from
themselves," they murdered