Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/179

Rh others of the same character in their writings, had it not received an extraordinary occasion for its revival on the discovery of America by Columbus. At this time, when public attention began to be attracted to the inhabitants of the New World, among other theories to account for their origin, one was started by a Jewish writer, in conformity with this rabbinical tradition, that they were the descendants of the ten lost tribes who had gone away from their captivity into a distant country. The authority for this tradition was assumed to have been sufficiently decided from a passage in the 13th chapter of the first book of Esdras, upon which foundation accordingly volumes have been written, attempting to show that the American Indians were the descendants of those tribes. The elaborate and costly work of Lord Kingsborough had for its groundwork the attempt to show that those tribes had found their way to Mexico and Central America, though by what means it was left unexplained, while Adair and others have exercised equal ingenuity in claiming the honour of such a descent for the rude hunters of North America. William Penn fancied he could trace Jewish features and other characteristics in the Indians with whom he conversed; and others, even to our day, persist in the same persuasion of their being of Israelitish descent. But the utmost they can bring forward in favour of their ideas, are some trivial resemblances only, which are common to mankind generally, without being able to show any real coincidences whatever of any peculiar nature between those nations of America and the Israelites, in language, civil or religious institutions, social habits, or physical characteristics; while in all these particulars abundant evidences may be adduced of their affinity to other nations of the globe, from whom therefore their origin may more justly be traced.

By the side of this fantasy, another scarcely less ill-founded has been suggested, that the people known to us as Afghans are the representatives of the ten tribes; and this theory has been received with a degree of favour, which entitles it, if on that ground alone, to our consideration. The first who suggested it seems to have been Sir William Jones; and the fact of so distinguished a scholar having indulged in such a supposition as that the ten tribes had really gone away from the land of their captivity into some unknown region, on the authority of the book of Esdras, is a proof of how great has been the credence given to this tradition, and how much it requires a detailed confutation. Since his day, numerous other writers have adopted the same theory for the descent of the Afghans; Sir George Rose