and among them of that of Voltaire. It is attempted to be confirmed by the undeniable fact of peculiar animals in great numbers and variety being found attached to our soil. To discuss this question would lead us far from our object; and we shall, therefore, waive those arguments which prove the human race to have descended from a single original progenitor. We shall only remark, that no reasonable man, who compares the races of mankind, can for a moment fail to observe that the difference in the appearance of the American Indians from the inhabitants of several regions of the old world is incomparably less than that which exists between well known and familiar branches of the population of the latter. An aboriginal American far more nearly resembles a Malay or an inhabitant of farther India, than the latter approximates either to the white European or to the African. We should, therefore, rather assume a separate Adam for the last-named variety of mankind, or for the Chinese or ultra-Gangetic Indian, than for the American. Much, however, need hardly be said to refute a theory which, besides its incompatibility with the records of revelation and with the doctrine of species in natural history, would, if carried out, lead to the assumption of an independent creation of mankind for each one of a dozen detached islands, if not for all those originally found peopled with uncivilized inhabitants. The art of navigation affords an easier solution of the difficulty, a solution which we shall shortly apply to the colonization of America.

In classifying the population of our continent, it may, in the first place, be now esteemed as a conceded point, that the whole extent of the extreme north is inhabited by a people of a distinct race. Greenland, Labrador, the whole northern border of the main land of America, the sea coast adjacent to Asia, including the peninsula of Alaska and the chain of islands projecting from the latter towards the Asia

tic coast, together with the portion of Asia immediately opposite, are found in the possession of tribes evidently of a common origin. This is proved by their dwarfish stature, their dark complexions, their flattened faces, evidently approximating to that of the Mongol, their habits of life, and their languages. All live by fishing, all inhabit the sea coast, and manifest the utmost unwillingness to leave it, all live in the most barbarous state of society; and all speak either dialects of the Esquimaux language, or at least languages closely approximated to this latter, both in their grammar and in the derivation of their words. In nearly all these respects, they form a most striking contrast with the adjacent Indian tribes; and most remarkably and absolutely so in the two very important particulars of bodily configuration and language. They are a race entirely distinct, and peculiarly adapted to inhabit the regions of the extreme north, in which probably men of any other origin would perish.

The proximity of land is evidently sufficient throughout the whole round of the arctic circle, to permit a people so nautical in their habits to colonize, in that latitude, the whole circumference of the globe. Not only does there exist the facility, so often cited, of navigating from Asia to America, or in the opposite direction, by crossing Behring's Straits, aided by the islands which are found in the middle of them, together with the more southerly route of communication, along the chain of the Aleutian islands, and the peninsula of Alaska, roads assigned by so many writers as those by which the progenitors of our Indians reached this continent; but in the direction of Europe the difficulties are by no means insuperable. The communication from Norway to Iceland and Greenland, discovered by the Norwegians in the ninth century, could have been, at a period still more remote, employed, as it then was, for purposes of colonization. From Greenland, the Esquimaux race appears, according to the observations of Baf

fin and Captain Ross, to communicate by extended migrations along the chain of islands that skirt the northern coast of the bay which has received the name of the former navigator, until they reach the coast of America, Besides this, there is the additional and easy route across Davis's Straits; a voyage not beyond what could be performed in Esquimaux whaling boats, such as would be capable of serving the ordinary purposes of these adventurous rovers.

The colonization of the northern coast of America, therefore, presents no difficulty in the explanation; the only question which remains consisting in the choice between the eastern and the western routes, or between a European and an Asiatic ancestry. In this the decision is not difficult; the Asiatic route is the shorter, and that which more immediately connects it with an analogous people. Opposed to the American continent, are the Tschuktschi; a people in conformation resembling the Esquimaux, of the most barbarous habits of life, and whose language is found by philologists to exhibit a similar origin. In grammatical construction and the derivation of many of their words, the traces of this appear to be too evident for denial. As there are such visible marks of a common origin, the question of the possibility of migration across the arm of the sea which separates northwest America from Asia, is thus at once solved. But it still remains to be investigated in which direction the removal was effected. As the language of a people or race is generally presumed to have received its origin and gained its development in those regions where the inhabitants resided for the longest time in a state of social intercourse, and as this is presumed to take place where the greatest numbers and widest extent of population are met with, this principle, when applied to the present case, would indicate that America was the birth-place of this singular variety of mankind, and that the Tschuktschi were, in reality, a colony trans

mitted to Asia. Enough, however, is observed to show the possibility of a barbarous people performing this journey; and if we can permit our imaginations to revert to a period so ancient as to be prior to the formation of a language, we may easily refer the earliest origin of the race to a Mongolian, or, as usage has styled it, a Tartar ancestry. The analogy to the Mongol population, so commonly ascribed to our Indians, is with the Esquimaux quite sufficiently visible. The whole conformation of the face and head is the same; the only remarkable difference between them in physical structure consisting in a reduction of stature. This is so natural a result of the action of cold and a deficiency of food in obstructing the development of the human figure, as certainly not to constitute a difficulty; and is, as is well known, common to all the inhabitants of the remote north-the three great races of Esquimaux, Samoyedes, and Laplanders.

The Mongolian origin, and the passage by Behring's Straits, and by the Aleutian islands and peninsula of Alaska, which we have thus attributed to the Esquimaux, have been also as sumed as belonging to the whole mass of American Indians. Urged with the genius and taste of the historian of America, Dr. Robertson, this has become the settled opinion within the British islands and in the United States; and on the continent of Europe, though inculcated with less confidence, and with a hesitation which is the offspring of greater knowledge, it is taught and defended by the learned editor of the Mithridates. In the present state of opinion, the various degrees of importance which may be ascribed to this hypothesis, with the different modifications which it may be made to undergo, must naturally form a large part of what remains to be said upon this difficult subject.

There is, then, no doubt of the possibility, and if other objections to this theory could be surmounted, of the very great probability of the original colonization of America from

Asia, by one of the two north-west routes already indicated. At the Straits of Behring, the two continents are said to approach so nearly as to make the island which lies in the middle of them visible from both shores. There is certainly no impracticability in performing such a voyage in favourable weather, by means of very rude canoes; and it is by no means certain that, in this high northern latitude, the two sides of the straits have not been connected by ice. There are so many circumstances under which it is easy to conceive that individuals of a barbarous people, might pass from one continent to the other, that it appears quite unnecessary to resort to any forced hypothesis to account for it. Without feeling any need of the supposition that these two parts of the world were once united and afterwards separated by an earthquake, it may suffice to suggest that hunters and fishers, in want of food, and meeting, from various causes, with difficulty in supplying themselves from the productions of their native territory, might become desirous of trying the advantages of the opposite coast. At other times, families in canoes might be blown off by storms. In short, there is no difficulty in exhibiting the practicability of what, as we have above stated, appears to have actually taken place, a migration between Asia and America.

The next argument which suggests itself to our consideration, is that America appears to have been settled by a savage people. "We may lay it down," says Dr. Robertson,

6.6

as a certain principle in this inquiry, that America was not peopled by any nation of the ancient continent which had made considerable progress in civilization.-Even the most cultivated nations of America were strangers to many of those simple inventions which are almost coeval with society in other parts of the world, and were known in the earliest periods of civilized life with which we have any acquaintance. From this it is manifest that the tribes which