Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/78



MONG all the inquiries which have been pursued by the curious and inquisitive, there is none more worthy the search of a learned head, than the source from whence we derive those arts and sciences which raise us so far above the vulgar, the countries in which they rose, and the channels by which they have been conveyed. As those, who first brought them among us, attained them by travelling into the remotest parts of the earth, I may boast of some advantages by the same means; since I write this from the deserts of Æthiopia, from those plains of sand, which have buried the pride of invading armies, with my foot perhaps at this instant ten fathom over the grave of Cambyses; a solitude to which neither Pythagoras nor Apollonius ever penetrated.

It is universally agreed, that arts and sciences were derived to us from the Ægyptians and Indians: but