Noah, who is the first seafaring man we read of, begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet.

Authors, it is true, are not wanting who affirm that the patriarch had a number of other children.

Thus Berosus makes him father of the gigantic Titans; Methodius gives him a son called Jonithus, or Jonicus (who was the first inventor of Johnny cakes); and others have mentioned a son, named Thuiscon, from whom descended the Teutons or Teutonic, or, in other words, the Dutch nation.
I regret exceedingly that the nature of my plan will not permit me to gratify the laudable curiosity of my readers, by investigating minutely the history of the great Noah.

Indeed, such an undertaking would be attended with more trouble than many people would imagine; for the good old patriarch seems to have been a great traveler in his day, and to have passed under a different name in every country that he visited.

The Chaldeans, for instance, give us his story, merely altering his name into Xisuthrus--a trivial alteration, which to an historian skilled in etymologies will appear wholly unimportant.