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Others from their flate of Slavery deduce their original from Ham, whole race, in the person of Canaan and his posterity, Noah cursed and predicted to Slavery and subjection under the offsprinf of Shem and Japhet ; upon which (as an Oriental fable reports) their skin became black on a sudden ; and thence arose the common opinion of Noah’s division of the world between his 3 sons, bequeathing Europe to Japhet, Asia to Shem, and Africa to Ham ; But for this there appears no foundation in reason, scripture, or authentic tradition. For of this partition was matter of fact, where was a settlement lest for Noah’s other pisterity, which he begat during the 350 years that he lived after the flood, uless he bequeathed America for their habitation which is greatly improbable ? And it is hardly possible yo prove that any of the offspring of Canaan, Noah’s acursed grandson, settled in the Negroz country ; which of ans was esteemed uninhabited and uninhabitable ; moreover the parts of the world, said to be divided between the posterity of Noah’s 3 sons, were only those that were known to be peopled in Moses’s days ; when the principal of Canaan’s descendants in particular dwelt in Palestine, and were in the following ages enslaved, destroyed or driven into banishment by the Hebrews the posterity of Shem ; which in a great measure gulfilled the curse of making the Canaanites Servants of Servants, that is Slaves, to the children of Shem. The rest of Canaan’s offsprinf settled in Phenicia, Cappadocia and other parts of Asiaminor, as far as Cholcis and the Enxine Sea. At lenght, from Tyre and Sidon, powerful colonies of them removed to Carthage and the adjacent places on the northern coast of Africa along the Mediterrantan Sea ; and it is well know, how the Grecians first subdued the greatest part of these countries, and the Romans at last vanquised and subjugated them all. Whence we infer the completion of the remaining part of the curse denounced against Canaan ; fr the Grecians and Esmens were the descendants of Japhet into whose power and service those children of Canaan were at length reduced.
But if the Negroes are deducible neuther from Sgem, Ham or Japhet, from what other original can they be derived.
To solve this it may be observed, that there seem but these two methods.
They may be the posterity of a son and daughter (Twins) of Noah and his wife begotten in the Ark, where the terror of the deluge and of the society of brute animals might affect the parents, especially the pregnant mother ; or they may be originally descended from Adam and Eve by some of the sons and daughters which they begat besided Cain, Abel and Seth ; some of whose posterity might have been preserved from the deluge on the Mountains of the Moone, &c. in Africa. Cain had a particulat mark sett upon him at his banishment, so might these be stigmatised in the original conception amongst the manifoll frights and troubles that Eve inderwear, and as Cain was expelled Eastward for his barbatous cruelty, so these might be providentially driven Westward below the horizon of China for crimes they had commeted, tho’ unoticed by Moses, who enlargesonly on the history of some of Seth’s descendants.
