His fathers, Karissa said, all believed that at one period the people of the whole earth were of one colour and language, and that the first man, like Adam, was produced from clay. Here I may observe, that the Abyssinians all contend that the real signification of the word Adam is first, and is a form of Adu, the Geez for the numeral one, and as such was once used to designate the first day of the week, and the first month of the year. Kádama is also another modification of the same word, signifying _before_ the first. A very interesting comparison can be therefore made between the Mosaical account of the Creation and that which has been preserved in Manetho as the Phœnician record of the same event; for the name of the first mortal in the list _Primogenus_ will bear an interpretation similar to the Geez translation of Adam, or _the first_. That which makes the identity more striking between the two narratives is, that the name of the first woman, according to Manetho, or rather the older writer, Sanchoniathon, was Æon, which is the very word that is given in the Genesis of the Geez Scriptures as the name of our common mother, and which, by tracing it through its modifications in Arabic, Hebrew, and the Greek, to our own language, will be found to be the original of the word Eve. That Æon appears to have been the word which designated the mother of mankind, we have the circumstance that it retains the signification of mother to the present day, with slight alterations depending upon dialects; for the Amhara of Tigre call the word mother, Eno, whilst in Shoa, Enart is the term employed. The connexion of the name Eve with the motive given for bestowing it, contained in the third chapter of Genesis, cannot, in fact, be perceived unless we admit this interpretation; for we are expressly told, that Adam gave his wife that name because “she was the _mother_ of all living.” To this also I may add, that by deriving the name _Adam_ from the Geez _Adu_, giving that name both to the man and woman, as in the second verse of the fifth chapter of Genesis, “And calling _their_ name _Adam_,” occasions no confusion, as it implies simply that they were _the first_. I have brought home with me two or three Ethiopic manuscripts relative to the subject of the creation of the world; for I believe by a careful comparison we shall find still retained in Geez literature the original from which Sanchoniathon, and perhaps other historians, have derived the accounts, at present received, of the first creation of man; at all events, the Amhara reject the authority of Genesis, and adhere to one which accords much more with the profane historian of the Phœnicians.