Note 8 — Chapter VII

“We shall trace cob,” he says, “for a long period as peculiarly used by the Cainite branch. Cain built a city, ἠν οἰχοδομων πολιν. To build a city infers a considerable population, and a certain development of social life. As single houses must have preceded cities, Cain certainly had previously constructed a house for himself and his wife before the foundation of Enoch. It could not have been a log-house: he was unprovided with instruments of iron to fell or fashion timber, for the art of working metals was not discovered by Tubal Cain till afterwards. It could not have been of stone, or brick, or mortar: that implies a knowledge of chemistry. The use of bricks is first recorded at the Tower of Babel, where bitumen was used instead of mortar. Cain, we may fairly assume, must have built of mud or cob.... Mud was the obvious material to a tiller of the earth. Cain, an eater of corn, must have observed the increased cohesiveness of clay when mixed with stubble: he might have seen that exemplification in the nests of some birds in the air. Mud mixed with straw would make his cob, while fallen branches of trees and dried vegetable matter would furnish his roof. His cottage, as to its colour, most certainly resembled the red towers of the Alhambra, and the ferruginous cob of Exeter; for as the first house was built near the site of Eden, it must have been composed of the same earth from which the first man was made,—that red earth, βωλος ἐρυθρος, which gave the ancient original name of the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf,—that red dust from whence the first man was called Adam—Adham, the red, the earthy man.”—Quarterly Review, No. CXVI. Art. Cob Walls.