Of the ancient Indians of Cuba, several historians of America relate, that when they were interrogated by the Spaniards concerning their origin, they answered, they had heard from their ancestors, that God created the heavens and the earth, and all things; that an old man, having foreseen the deluge with which God designed to chastise the sins of men, built a large canoe and embarked in it with his family, and many animals; that when the inundation ceased, he sent out a raven, which, because it found food suited to its nature to feed on, never returned to the canoe; that he then sent out a pigeon, which soon returned, bearing a branch of the _Hoba_ tree, a certain fruit-tree of America, in its mouth; that when the old man saw the earth dry, he disembarked, and having made himself wine of the wood grape, he became intoxicated and fell asleep; that then one of his sons made ridicule of his nakedness, and that another son piously covered him; that, upon waking, he blessed the latter and cursed the former. Lastly, these islanders held that they had their origin from the accursed son, and therefore went almost naked; that the Spaniards, as they were clothed, descended perhaps from the other. Many of the nations of America, says Clavigero, have the same tradition, agreeing nearly to what we have already related. It was the opinion of this author, that the nations who peopled the Mexican empire belonged to the posterity of Naphtuhim—(the same, we imagine, with Japheth;) and that their ancestors, having left Egypt not long after the confusion of the ancient language, travelled towards America, crossing over on the isthmus, which it is supposed once united America with the African continent, but since has been beaten down by the operation of the waters of the Atlantic on the north, and of the Southern ocean on the south, or by the operation of earthquakes.