institutions, will be the glorious reward of future enterprise; and since the days of Columbus, no subject of more stirring interest, or of greater importance has been discussed, than the probability of finding in Central Africa a country characterized by the civilization of China, but more purely sustained in its original excellence by its isolated position, surrounded by burning deserts, that like “flaming swords,” turn every way to keep the way of “the tree of life.” To me, it almost appears such a community of man is shadowed out in the mystical language of the sacred historian; and though I do not expect to find a paradise, still there is that in Central Africa that will well reward those adventurous spirits who will press on to explore its unknown portions. The empty iron-bound chest taught the man who opened it, industry; and even if no wonderful discovery be made, knowledge, must result from a journey across the mysterious continent. I return again to Karissa and his system of ethnology, for out of the question of my being one of the nation of whites, or _Surdi_, a conversation grew, by which I perceived the very simple system of the original separation of man that is entertained by the Abyssinians, and their ideas upon which are singularly confirmed by what is observed in our own extent of knowledge. This is, that originally three families of man occupied three distinct countries, each divided by their respective seas; and that Tokruree, the blacks, were separated from the whites by a white sea; which I find actually to mean the Mediterranean, so called by Arabian geographers, from being supposed to belong to the white people. The red people, again, were the Asiatics, the Assyrians of Jewish historians; and the sea which separated them from Tokruree, or Africa, was, and is called to the present day, the Red Sea, from the reason of its being situated upon the borders of a country inhabited by a red race of men; whilst the black people, had also their particular sea, which is that which intervenes between India and Zanzibar, and which still bears that name in Arabic and Indian geographies. This simple division of the earth seems to have been the popular idea of ethnology at a very early period; for all the various names of Alps, Albania, Albion, and numerous others, of Latin and Greek combination, having reference to this colour, prove that the ancient designation of Europeans was “the whites,” and which appears to have been as general and as familiar a term to use, as is the word blacks, or Negroes, or Tokruree, when, at the present day, we speak of those coloured inhabitants of Africa; whilst on the other hand the derivation of Asia from Assa, a word which signifies red, is both easy and natural. Of the word Tokruree, and its Geez signification, my reader must be well aware that it means _blacks_, or Negroes, and is the significant and expressive designation of those people.