But this entrance into Egypt must have taken place at so remote a date that the physical features of that part of the world might then have been somewhat different from what they are now. The Dead Sea might not then have been thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and the isthmus we have just seen canalized might then have been navigable water. But it will make the point in question more distinct if I endeavour to speak more precisely about it. The immigration into Egypt could not possibly have been an offset of the Aryan immigration into India, which resulted in the formation of the Hindoo, or of its westward outflow, which resulted in the formation of the Greeks, Romans, and Teutons. These dispersions must, we know, speaking broadly, have been contemporaneous. Their date, however, as has been already observed, was so remote that no one branch of the race retained the slightest trace of a tradition of its original seat, or of the way in which they themselves came to their new home, or of any particulars of the occurrence. We will suppose, then, that the event to which they all belong, and of which each is a part, occurred 10,000 years ago. I merely use these figures to make myself intelligible. But the Aryan immigration into Egypt belongs to a still more remote epoch, and to another order of events. In the stratifications of history its place is far lower down. It is a part of what forms a distinct and more primitive stratum. Again, for the purpose of making my meaning distinct, I will say that it belonged to a series of events which took place 15,000 years ago. The peoples and civilization of Europe, as they now exist, are to be traced back to the first-mentioned of these two world-movements. To that which preceded it may possibly be referred some fragments of a previous condition of things in Europe which have been enigmas to historians and ethnologists, as the Etruscans, the Finns, the Laps, and the Basques. The Egyptians may have been a part of that first original wave coming down freely of their own accord into Egypt. Or they may have been driven out of Persia, or from the banks of the Indus, at the epoch of the rise and outflow of the second wave. At all events, this is clear, that they were no part of the second wave itself; because their language was older than the Aryan tongue of that epoch. And if, as appears probable, it was also older than that of the Semitic peoples, they, too, must have come into being after the Egyptians.[2] CHAPTER IV. EGYPT THE JAPAN OF THE OLD WORLD. Nec vero terræ ferre omnes omnia possunt.—VIRGIL.