THE WHITE RACE OF PALESTINE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 8525, 3 November 1888, Page 7

THE WHITE RACE OF PALESTINE.

Nature. On the occasion of my first visit to Palestine 1 was struck by the number of bine-eyed, fair-haired children whom I met with in the towns and villages, more especially in the mountainous parts of the country. At the time I supposed them to be the descendants of the Crusaders or of the other natives of Northern'Europe who found their way to the Holy Land during the Middle Ages. But a now light has recently been thrown on the matter by the ethnological observations made by Mr Flinders Petrie in Egypt. The winter before last Mr Petrie was commissioned by the British Association to take oasts and photographs of the ethnological types represented on the Egyptian monuments and to note, wheiever it was possible, the colour of the akin, eyes, and hair. It was not the first time, however, that notes of the kind had been taken. Some years ago, Oaburc, a careful observer, had noticed that in the sculptures of Rameses 11, at Abu-Simbel ‘ the Shaau of Kanana ’ were depicted with blue eyes, and red hair, eyebrows and beard, and the Amaur with ‘the eyes blue, the eyebrows and beard red.* As * the Shasu of Kanana ’ lived a little to the south of Hefabron, while the Amaur are the Amorites of the Old Testament, it was clear that a population existed in Palestine in the fourteenth century before our era which had all the characteristics of the white race. Mr Petrie’s observations have abundantly verified this conclusion. He finds that, on the walls of a Theban tomb, the chief of Kadesh on the Orontes is painted with a white skin, and light red-brown hair, Kadesh was the southern capital of the Hittites, after their invasion of Syria, hat the Egyptian inscriptions describe it as being ‘ in the land of Amaur ;’ and that its chief must have been an Amorite is shown by the fact that the Hittites are depicted with yellow or orange skins, their hair being black and their eyes dark. The physiognomy of the Hittites and Amorites, moreover, differed widely. The Egyptian artists agree with the native Hittite monuments in representing the former with ugly protrusive profile, and Mongoloid features; the hair being arranged at the back of the head In a sort of ‘ pig-tail.’ The Amaur or Amorites on the other band, are a handsome people, tall, and dolichocephalic, with large subaquiline noses, and a short pointed beard at the end of the chin. The defenders of ‘ the fort of Amaur’ are represented as having been burnt a light pink-red by the action of the sun. Otherwise the skin is white or ‘sallow.’ We learn, then, from the ancient monuments of Egypt that a portion of Palestine was occupied by a white race before its conquest by the Israelites. And they further inform us that this white race continued to exist in the country after the conquest. The physical characteristics of the cap tires taken by Shishak in the time of Eehoboam from the cities of Judah have Amorite and not Jewish features. There is nothing in common between them and the tribute-bearers of Jehu, who are depicted on the black obelisk from Nimroud, no win the British Museum, with faces of a most typically Jewish oast. In the tenth century before our ora, consequently, the bulk of the population in the southern parof Judaea must have been of Amorite origin. It is not wonderful, therefore, if we find traces of the same population still surviving in Palestine. There is no need of explaining their existence by a theory of their descent from the Crusaders. The survival of the ancient white race of Palestine is parallel to the survival of the ancient white race of Northern Africa, now generally known among French writers under the name of Kabyles. The Kabyles were at one time imagined to be tne descendants of the Vandals, but wa now know that they have inhabited the southern coast of the Mediterranean since the later Neolithic age. They are the Libyans of antiquity, represented on the Egyptian monuments, like the Amorites, with white skins, blue eyes, and dolichocephalic skulls, and similarly described by classical writers. They extended into Teneriffe and the Canary Islands, and their longheaded skulls have beeu disinterred from the dolmans of Northern Africa. To the traveller who sees them for the first time the Kabyles offer a striking appearance. Their clear white skins, covered- with freckles, their blue eyes and light hair, remind him of the so-called ‘ Bed Kelts 4 he has met with in an Irish village. They bear a high reputation for physical courage and love of independence, though at the same time they seem to be an orderly people. But they have two characteristics which they share with «he white race of Northern Europe. They are mountaineers, the climate of the African plains being apparently too hot for them, and they are distinguished by their tall stature. These were equally the characteristics of the Amorites of ancient Palestine. The Jews declared that their ‘height was like tho height of the cedar,’ the Semitic tribes by the side of them seeming to be but ‘grasshoppers,’ and the iron couch of Og, the Amorite king of Bashan, preserved at Rabbath, afterwards the capital of Ammon, excited the wonder of later generations on account of its size. KITE-FLYING AS A SCIENCE, A correspondent who called upon Mr Douglas Archibald, F.R. Met. Soc,, who has invented the combination of the kite-balloon, sends us the following account of the invention : —Mr Archibald stated that experience had shown that captive balloons can only be flown with any success for purposes of observation during, on an average, a third of tho year, on account of their extreme sensitiveness to the action of the wind. Indeed, a captive balloon cannot be utilises at all when the wind is blowing more than twenty miles an hour. By the invention of tho kite-balloon, not only are these difficulties overcome, but a kite adds immensely to the lifting power of the balloon, and thus economises the cost of the gas employed. The kite is of silk stt etched on two transverse reds of bamboo, and is made in proportion to tho size of the balloon. It is fastened to the side of the balloon, almost covering it, and thus protects it from the wind. With this application captivo ballons can be flown during no less than about 330 days, as against 100 days without the kite. At a recent trial before Major Templar, at Chatham, tho additional lifting power of the kite was fully demonstrated. Alone a small balloon of 100 cubic feet capacity could only raise 41bs.; but when attached to one of the small kites in a very light breeze, it lifted 1000 feet of steel wire (the-eartb line) and one of the soldiers’ coats, extemporised for the oocation, weighing lOlbs., a result which the balloon department declared had never yet been accomplished with so small a balloon. Or, to put the matter in another vay, illustrating the value ef the kite application as regards economy of space and cost, a balloon of 2000 cubic feet capacity, with coal gss plus, a proportionate kite will lift ISOlbs., say, in a wind of twenty miles an hour, while to lift the same weight by balloon alone, a balloon of 4500 cubic feet capacity would be required, Mr Archibald claims the utility of his invention for signalling at sea, where the wind is almost always too strong for a captive balloon to fly alone; and in combination with Brace’s electric light balloons, naval signalling might be effected with ships below the horizon. Mr Archibald has been for years carrying on experiments in anemometrical observation, under grants from the Royal Society, with a system of kite-flying. He raises his kites tandem fashion in very light winds. A small one is first got aloft, which helps np a heavier one, and so on. With two small kites he once lifted about 2500 feet of wire, and three anemometers, each weighing IJlb., to a vertical height of 1100 feet, with a wind of only a little over seven miles an honr. And he is now organising a system of kites which will in twenty minutes raise a man sufficiently high to take an observation of the enemy with the wind blowing from twenty to thirty-five miles an hour, when no balloon could possibly be utilised. And he has engaged to raise a camera with either a system of kites or

with a kite balloon at the approaching Unionist demonstration in Bridge Park, by which means he hopes to procure a photograph both as interesting from a political as from a scientific point of view.—Pall Mall Gazette.