At Gibraltar, in 1817, a negro regiment was almost annihilated by consumption. In 1814, during the three weeks on the Niger, 130 Europeans out of 145 caught African fever, and 40 died; out of 158 negro sailors only eleven were affected, and not one died. In 1809 the British expedition to Welchereen failed in the Netherlands through marsh fever. About the same time, in St. Domingo, about 15,000 French soldiers died from malaria. Of 30,000 Frenchmen, only 8,000 survived exposure to that Antillian island; while the Dominicanised African negro, Toussaint l’Overture, retransported to Europe, was perishing from the chill of his prison in France.” ²² “Types of Mankind,” p. 58. ²³ “Indigenous Races of the Earth,” p. 458. The alleged discovery of whiteskinned negroes in Western Africa does not affect this question; it is not only to the color of the skin but also to the general negro characteristics that the above remarks apply. On the third point, again quoting Dr. Nott:— “The only argument left, then, is that of congenital varieties or peculiarities, which are said to spring up and be transmitted from parent to child, so as to form new races. Let us pause for a moment to illustrate this fanciful idea. The negroes of Africa, for example, are admitted not to be offsets from some other race which have been gradually blackened and changed in a moral and physical type by the action of climate; but it is asserted that ‘once, in the flight of ages’ some genuine little negro, or rather many such, were born of Caucasian, Mongol, or other light-skinned parents, and then have turned about and changed the type of the inhabitants of a whole continent. So in America, the countless aborigines found on this continent, who we have reason to believe were building mounds before the time of Abraham, are the offspring of a race changed by accidental or congenital varieties. Thus, too, old China, India, Australia, Oceana, etc., all owe their types, physical and mental, to congenital and accidental varieties, and are descended from Adam and Eve! Can human credulity go farther, or human ingenuity invent any argument more absurd?”²⁴ ²⁴ Nott and Gliddon, “Indigenous Races,” p. 587. But even supposing these objections to the second and third suppositions set aside, there are two other propositions which, if affirmed, as I believe they may be, entirely overthrow the orthodox assertion: “That Adam and Eve, six thousand years ago, were the first pair; and that all diversities now existing must find their common source in Noah—less than four thousand three hundred years from the present time.” These two are as follows: 1. That man may be traced back on the earth long prior to the alleged Adamic era. 2. That there are diversities traceable as existing amongst the human race four thousand five hundred years ago, as marked as in the present day.