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world if you will have it so) ever had a beginning at all. I
remember once, and once only, hearing something remotely
hinted, by a man of many speculations, concerning the origin
of the human race; and by this individual, the very word
Adam (or Red Earth), which you make use of, was employed.
He employed it, however, in a generical sense, with reference
to the spontaneous germination from rank soil (just as a
thousand of the lower genera of creatures are germinated)
the spontaneous germination, I say, of five vast hordes of
men, simultaneously upspringing in five distinct and nearly
equal divisions of the globe.
Here, in general, the company shrugged their shoulders,
and one or two of us touched our foreheads with a very
significant air. Mr. Silk Buckingham, first glancing slightly at
the occiput and then at the sinciput of Allamistakeo, spoke as
follows:
The long duration of human life in your time, together
with the occasional practice of passing it, as you have
explained, in installments, must have had, indeed, a strong
tendency to the general development and conglomeration of
knowledge. I presume, therefore, that we are to attribute the
marked inferiority of the old Egyptians in all particulars of
science, when compared with the moderns, and more
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especially with the Yankees, altogether to the superior solidity
of the Egyptian skull.
I confess again, replied the Count, with much suavity,
that I am somewhat at a loss to comprehend you; pray, to
what particulars of science do you allude?
Here our whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great
length, the assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of
animal magnetism.
Having heard us to an end, the Count proceeded to relate
a few anecdotes, which rendered it evident that prototypes of
Gall and Spurzheim had flourished and faded in Egypt so long
ago as to have been nearly forgotten, and that the
manoeuvres of Mesmer were really very contemptible tricks
when put in collation with the positive miracles of the Theban
savans, who created lice and a great many other similar
things.
I here asked the Count if his people were able to calculate
eclipses. He smiled rather contemptuously, and said they
were.
This put me a little out, but I began to make other
inquiries in regard to his astronomical knowledge, when a
member of the company, who had never as yet opened his
mouth, whispered in my ear, that for information on this
head, I had better consult Ptolemy (whoever Ptolemy is), as
well as one Plutarch de facie lunae.
I then questioned the Mummy about burning-glasses and
lenses, and, in general, about the manufacture of glass; but I
had not made an end of my queries before the silent member
again touched me quietly on the elbow, and begged me for
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God's sake to take a peep at Diodorus Siculus. As for the
Count, he merely asked me, in the way of reply, if we
moderns possessed any such microscopes as would enable us
to cut cameos in the style of the Egyptians. While I was
thinking how I should answer this question, little Doctor
Ponnonner committed himself in a very extraordinary way.
Look at our architecture! he exclaimed, greatly to the
indignation of both the travellers, who pinched him black and
blue to no purpose.
Look, he cried with enthusiasm, at the Bowling-Green
Fountain in New York! or if this be too vast a contemplation,
regard for a moment the Capitol at Washington, D. C.!" and
the good little medical man went on to detail very minutely,
the proportions of the fabric to which he referred. He
explained that the portico alone was adorned with no less
than four and twenty columns, five feet in diameter, and ten
feet apart.
The Count said that he regretted not being able to
remember, just at that moment, the precise dimensions of
any one of the principal buildings of the city of Aznac, whose
foundations were laid in the night of Time, but the ruins of
which were still standing, at the epoch of his entombment, in
a vast plain of sand to the westward of Thebes. He
recollected, however, (talking of the porticoes,) that one
affixed to an inferior palace in a kind of suburb called Carnac,
consisted of a hundred and forty-four columns, thirty-seven
feet in circumference, and twenty-five feet apart. The
approach to this portico, from the Nile, was through an
avenue two miles long, composed of sphynxes, statues, and
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obelisks, twenty, sixty, and a hundred feet in height. The
palace itself (as well as he could remember) was, in one
direction, two miles long, and might have been altogether
about seven in circuit. Its walls were richly painted all over,
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