mockery, but for this addition there seems no sufficient grounds." [70] The italics are mine. There is, however, the tradition, and, moreover, a distinct tradition that Ham was black. Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, in his "Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians," i., says-- "The Hebrew word Ham is identical with the Egyptian Khem, being properly written Khm, Kham, or Khem, and is the same which the Egyptians themselves gave to their country in the sculptures of the earliest and latest periods" (261). Egypt was denominated Chemi (Khemi), or the land of Ham, "as we find in the hieroglyphic legends; and the city of Khem, or Panopolis, was called in Egyptian Chemmo, of which evident traces are preserved in that of the modern town E'Khmim" (260). "Besides the hieroglyphic group, composed of the two above alluded to (260), indicating Egypt, was one consisting of _an eye_, and the sign land, _which bore the same_ signification; and since _the pupil_, or _black_ of the eye, was called _Chemi_, we may conclude this to be a phonetic mode of writing the name of Egypt, which Plutarch pretends was called Chemmia, from the _blackness_ of its soil" (263). "_Chame_ is _black_ in _Coptic_, Egypt is _Chemi_, and it is remarkable that _khom_ or _chom_ is used in Hebrew for black or brown, as in Gen. xxx. 32-40."--_Id._ Here then, at any rate, the name of Ham or Cham is curiously associated with blackness, and must have been so associated from the commencement of Egyptian history. I leave it to the Egyptologist to decide whether the presumption is stronger that the name of Egypt, identical with that of Ham, was originally derived from the blackness of its soil, or from the blackness of him whose name was identical with it ("the land of Ham" being both the scriptural and Egyptian appellation), more especially when "the eye" (apparently a personal or historical, not certainly a geographical allusion) was used as an equivalent hieroglyphic symbol for land.[71] [71] The eye would be the very most apposite symbol for blackness, if we consider that blackness lingers there after the skin has become white, and, in the case of half-breeds, is the test of descent in gradations even beyond, I believe, the octoroon. Captain King ("Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia," ii. Append.) says, "That although there is the greatest diversity of words among the Australian tribes, the equivalent for 'eye' is common to them all."