INTRODUCTION.



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finer nor a richer country in all the dominions of the Grand
Signior, than that which lies between Bagdad and Bassora,
beino the very tract which, according to this scheme, was
anciently called the Land of Eden.



             THE ANTEDILUVIANS.

  A SINGLE pair were the first progenitors of the-
whole human race, but their primitive innocence
and felicity were quickly lost in misery and guilt;
and the unfortunate circumstances which produced
the fatal change in their own condition as well as -in
that of their posterity, are already too well known
to receive the slightest comment from us. In the pro-
gress of their lives, however,, their offspring became
numerous. Dissension and mutual hatred increased
as they multiplied in numbers. Crimes and vices were
introduced among men from the very moment that Cain
imbued his hands in the blood of his brother Abel.
  In the meantime the posterity of Cain improved the
arts taught them by Jabal and his brothers. They built
cities-their various degrees of strenath or of industry
had produced inequality of condition; opulence had
substituted artificial and extravagant luxuries for the
simple and pure pleasures of nature ; and notwithstand-
ing the interruption of peace which was caused by the
growing depravity of the age, they still pursued a con-
nubial union, which so rapidly multiplied their num-
bers, that many different generations were contemporary
upon the earth.
  Josephus relates, that the children of Seth, by the
contemplation of the heavenly bodies, laid the found-
ation of the science of astronomy; and, understanding
from a prediction of Adam, that the earth was to be de-
stroyed, once by water, and once by fire, they engraved
their observations on two pillars, called the pillars of
                           3*