The Rising Son; or, the Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored RaceBrown, William Wells
History
The Rising Son; or, the Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race
Brown, William Wells
African Americans -- Biography; African Americans -- History; Black race; Slavery -- United States
The word of God by his servant Paul has settled forever the question of
the equal origin of the human races, and it will stand good against all
scientific research. “God hath made of one blood all the nations of men
for to dwell on all the face of the earth.”
The Ethiopians are not constitutionally different from the rest of the
human family, and therefore, we must insist upon _unity_, although we
see and admit the variety.
Some writers have endeavored to account for this difference of color,
by connecting it with the curse pronounced upon Cain. This theory,
however, has no foundation; for if Cain was the progenitor of Noah,
and if Cain’s new peculiarities were perpetuated, then, as Noah was
the father of the world’s new population, the question would be, not
how to account for any of the human family being black, but how can
we account for any being white? All this speculation as to the change
of Cain’s color, as a theory for accounting for the variety peculiar
to Cush and the Ethiopians, falls to the ground when we trace back the
genealogy of Noah, and find that he descended not from Cain, but from
Seth.
Of course Cain’s descendants, no matter what their color, became
extinct at the flood. No miracle was needed in Ethiopia to bring about
a change in the color of its inhabitants. The very fact that the nation
derived its name from the climate should be enough to satisfy the
most skeptical. What was true of the Ethiopians was also true of the
Egyptians, with regard to color; for Herodotus tells us that the latter
were colored and had curled hair.
The vast increase of the population of Ethiopia, and a wish of its
rulers to possess more territory, induced them to send expeditions down
the Nile, and towards the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Some of
these adventurers, as early as B. C. 885, took up their abode on the
Mediterranean coast, and founded the place which in later years became
the great city of Carthage. Necho, king of Egypt, a man distinguished
for his spirit of enterprise, sent an expedition (B. C. 616) around
the African coast. He employed Phœnecian navigators. This fleet sailed
down the Red Sea, passed the straits of Balel-Mandeb, and, coasting
the African continent, discovered the passage around the Cape of Good
Hope, two thousand years before its re-discovery by Dias and Vasco de
Gama. This expedition was three years in its researches, and while
gone, got out of food, landed, planted corn, and waited for the crop.
After harvesting the grain, they proceeded on their voyage. The fleet
returned to Egypt through the Atlantic Ocean, the straits of Gibralter,
and the Mediterranean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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