INTRODUCTION.



elevated and influential English peers, "that the Irish
were aliens in language, nation, &c.," we have only to
say, that, if the present race of Celtic Irish are the
descendants of the Aborigines of Britain and Ireland, as
undoubtedly they are, it must sound strange in their ears,
to hear themselves called strangers in the land which they
have inherited and inhabited from time immemorial.



MAGOG, THE PROGENITOR OF THE NORTH
               AMERICAN INDIANS.

  Magog, the second son of Japhet, founded those who
who were, after him, called the Magogites, but whom the
Greeks named Scythians. According to Josephus, St.
Jeronymus, the majority of the Christian fathers, and
some of the most eminent historians and geographers,
ancient and. modern, Magog was the founder and father
of the Scythians, Tartars, and Moguls, and consequently
of the Siberians, and all these north-eastern tribes. The
Arabs place Magog, whom they call Majuj, to the farther
end of Tartary, towards the north and north-east. There
is not the least doubt, therefore, but the posterity of Magog
were those who wandered north and north-eastward, after
the dispersion of the children of Noah from their prim-
eval seats; and the Scythians were, perhaps, the first and
the most numerous.
  At this early state of society, when mankind were but
loosely combined together in social union, every quarrel,
every crime, every -fond fancy or moody disgust, conti-
nually prompted emigration; and even the most remote
and inhospitable parts of the earth were beginning to
receive human inhabitants. For nearly thirty years, after
having harassed and broken the monarchies of the south,
the Seythians were the lords also of western Asia. At the
time when the Assyrian empire was at its highest pitch



xxi1