strength of common men, and they were left to the corruption of their own hearts. They passed from one evil deed unto another, and set at naught all the rules and laws of the elders of the land. They formed great caves at the bottoms of the eastern mountains, and called themselves by the name of AmOlam, the hidden people, or the people who live in the caves of the earth. They issued forth from their secret retreats, and made themselves fat with the rich spoils of the south country and the plains of the west. Had it not pleased the God of our fathers that these wicked ones should be few in number, they would have conquered and desolated the whole world. They destroyed the white tents of the sons of Jabal, and ate up the cattle of the land, as the flocks of locusts eat up the plants of the valleys and the green leaves of the shittim and almug trees in the woods of Vahpaz. Now it came to pass that the young men, who had been taught by Tubal-cain. to make instruments of brass and iron, forged swords, and spears, and javelins; and the people of the land gathered themselves together in an army of many thousands, to defend their flocks, and their herds, and their possessions, and their fields, and their gardens, and their cities, and their villages. Then the sons of Adam began to slay one another, as Cain slew Abel in the beginning of time.

The sins of those who had been called the Sons

1

of God, but were now called the Sons of the Serpent, and the wars and evils that came into the world as soon as Enoch was taken from it, grieved the LORD at his heart, and he declared in a vision to that good young man, Methuselah, that he repented that he had made man on the earth. Enoch walked with

God in heaven in the year from the creation Nine Hundred and Eighty-seven. In the year One Thousand and Fifteen, the war broke out between the Am-Olam and the people of the west. Of those first wars among the children of men I have written a chronicle, and will send thee the principal parts of it in the epistles that I will write to thee hereafter. In the year One Thousand One hundred and One, the Lord was provoked to anger against the inhabitants of the earth. On the ninth day of the seventh new moon, the heaven became dark with clouds and tempest. There were great thunders and lightnings. At the setting of the sun, there came a whirlwind and an earthquake which shook the pillars of the world, as the leaves of the cypress trees are shaken when a great fire has been kindled and rages on the mountains in the season of drought. The cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden spread abroad their bright wings over many mountains and plains, and ascended to Heaven upon chariots of fire that gave light to the most distant people under the Sun. Angels followed them, bearing the flaming sword

which had turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. The garden of Eden was seen no more, and the mountain of Debar sank into the black waters of the earthquake. All flesh trembled, and remembered the prophecy of Enoch, "Behold, the great and terrible day of destruction from the Lord "

In the the epistle that I wrote to thee on the nineteenth day of the seventh new moon in the year 1159, I told thee that I had written a chronicle of the first wars among the children of men. In the year of the Creation one thousand and fifteen, Phartham, the chief of the Am-Olam, gathered together

the chiefs of the tribes of that people, and commanded them to choose captains of thousands and captains of hundreds, and captains of fifties, and captains of tens; and when they had chosen them, he commanded the captains to teach them the use of the bow and the arrow, and the sword, and the spear, and the javelin, and the other instruments of brass and iron, which had been invented by Tubal-cain, the instructer of every artificer in brass and iron. And he said unto the chiefs of the tribes, and unto all the people, Behold, there is come unto us a young man from the land of the west, and he has told me that a shepherd of the land of Zahab, while he fed his flock upon the mountain of Geboah, beheld a little cloud arising out of the sea of Suphah, like the eye of a camel, and it grew and became a great and a black cloud, and overspread the sky, and prevented the shining of the sun, and darkened the windows of heaven, and the firmament became dark with thick clouds and with violent wind, and there came much rain, and the mountain was shaken, and a river came down the side of the mountain, and the river became a sea in the plain of the valley, and the white flock of the shepherd was carried away by the tempest, as the army of the locusts is carried away by the south wind and driven into the great waters of the north. The shepherd was thrown upon a high rock in the valley, and upon the next day escaped upon a great sycamore

tree that was torn up by the wind and floated upon the waters. When the tempest was over and gone, and the waters were in part dried up, it was discovered that the storm had made a cleft in the mountain, as it were a piece of land which a yoke of oxen might plough in two days. Such a tempest had never before happened, and the people of the land came from the east and the west, and the north and the south, to behold this wonderful work of the strong arm of the LORD. And when they looked down into the depth of the cleft of the mountain, lo, they beheld a bright and shining thing, of exceeding beauty, of a yellow colour, and such as the eye of man had never seen until this day. And they digged a passage in one of the sides of the cleft, and put down a ladder, and some of the people went down and brought up some small pieces of the yellow stones, and they all wondered what these things might be. Now was there among the people, Hareth, one of the artificers in brass and iron, who had been taught by Tubal-cain, and who was a cunning man, and had great knowledge of the earth and the hidden things thereof; and he said unto the people that were gathered together, this is the most beautiful thing that has been found at any time in the earth, it is harder than iron, and finer than brass, and we will make of it ornaments for our wives and children, and for our horses and our camels, and for