Page:An English Garner Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (Volume 1 1877).pdf/119



Sir WALTER RALEIGH.

The Infancy and Age of Time.

{History of the World.}

It may perchance seem strange to the reader that in all ancient stories, he finds one and the same beginning of nations after the Flood; and that the first planters of all parts of the world were said to be mighty and giant-like men; and that as Phoenicia, Egypt, Lybia and Greece had HERCULES, ORESTES, ANTÆUS, TYPHON, and the like; as Denmark had STARCHATERUS remembered by SAXO Grammaticus; as Scythia, Bretagne and other regions had giants for their first inhabitants: so this island of Sicily had her LESTRIGONES and CYCLOPS.

This discourse I could also reject for feigned and fabulous, did not MOSES make us know that the ZAMZUMMIM, EMIMS, ANAKIM and OG of Bashan with others; which sometime inhabited the mountains and deserts of Moab, Ammon, and Mount Seir, were men of exceeding strength and stature, and of the race of giants: and were it not that TERTULLIAN, Saint AUGUSTINE, NICEPHORUS, PROCOPIUS, ISIDORE, PLINY, DIODORUS, HERODOTUS, SOLINUS, PLUTARCH, and many other authors, have confirmed their opinion. Yea, VESPUTIUS, in his Second Navigation into America, hath reported that he himself hath seen the like men in those parts.

Again, whereas the selfsame is written of all nations that is written of one; as touching their simplicity of life; their mean fare; their feeding on acorns and roots; their poor cottages; the covering of their bodies with the skins of beasts; their hunting; their arms and weapons, and their warfare; their first passages over great rivers and arms of the sea upon rafts of trees tied together; and afterwards their making boats, first of twigs and leather, then of wood; first with oars and then with sails; that they esteemed as gods the first finders-out of arts, as of husbandry, of laws,