Page:An essay on the origin and relative status of the white and colored races of mankind.djvu/12

 fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. "And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him seven fold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him."

And this mark, intended solely for Cain's personal protection, and unaccompanied by any hereditary indication, they say was that which permanently changed his own and his posterity's skin, from a white, or some other undescribed complex ioncomplexion [sic], to an indelible black; together with other changes affecting his and their whole physical formation, equally conspicuous. A part of the curse related to Cain's particular vocation, as a tiller of the ground, thus:—"When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield to thee her strength." The words "thou" and "thee" apply personally to Cain, alone, and not to his posterity; and so it is with the other part of the curse: "a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth," and which, allowing the widest latitude of inference, is not applicable to the black Race, who, in their own country, are not, with extremely limited exceptions, tillers of the ground; and, although they are an inferior and a degraded Race, it is questionable whether they can be said to be as vagabondish as the wandering Arabs or Gypsies: and they cannot fairly be said to be fugitives; because they have a country of their own, which is presumed to have been inhabited by them, for a period, coeval with the inhabitability of other countries, occupied by other Races: for no authentic history or tradition reaches back to the period when their country was first inhabited. Now is it not rather incredible to suppose that the Lord should, so indefinitely, indicate a change which was permanently to affect Cain's own and his posterity's whole complexion,