36/44 177 .-- M.] [Footnote 83: The progress of religion is well known. The use of letter was introduced among the savages of Europe about fifteen hundred years before Christ; and the Europeans carried them to America about fifteen centuries after the Christian Aera. But in a period of three thousand years, the Phoenician alphabet received considerable alterations, as it passed through the hands of the Greeks and Romans.] [Footnote 84: Dion Cassius, lib.lxviii.p. 1131.] The geographers of antiquity have frequently hesitated to what portion of the globe they should ascribe Egypt. |