that much clearer light may yet be thrown on the origin and history of this extraordinary race of men, who will be objects of increasing interest with the historians, naturalists and philosophers of future times.

This subject is become interesting not more to men of science than to orthodox believers in divine revelation. Asia has always been considered as the birth-place of the first parents of mankind, and from that single stock every branch has originated. Infidels, however, had not been wanting in the old world, who wished, by overthrowing this system of belief, to invalidate the truth of the Mosaic account of creation, and thus to weaken the faith of mankind in revelation itself, which seemed to be built upon that account. On the discovery of America, infidelity seemed to triumph. For nearly four thousand years, Moses had been uncontradicted, and his history had stood the test of time and the assaults of the enemies of truth. Infidels now thought they had nature on their side of the question, when they saw a new world; when they beheld millions of red men scattered over the immense regions of a new country, without a known possibility of any connection with the old world, from which they could have emigrated; separated from each other by an ocean of three thousand miles in width, while the savages had never opened a single sail to the wind; and were as ignorant of all the arts known on the eastern continent, as they were dissimilar to its inhabitants in complexion, manners and improvements. Efforts were made to impose upon the ignorant and credulous the opinion that they were a race peculiar to themselves; had an origin other than the one that the Mosaic account assigned; and were the genuine Aborigines of the soil they tilled.

The advocates of revelation would not easily give up Moses, and deem him a writer of fictions. They still maintained the old doctrine of the unity of the human race. They asked for proofs of the contrary position; but of proofs there was none. The combat was that of probabilities, where no manner of decision could be had; while of conjecture the field was wide as infinity, and the schemes as extravagant as the fancies of theorists.

The defender of divine revelation is not obliged to explain every abtrusity of natural knowledge, and clear up every degree of obscurity in science Some have contended, however, that there is nothing impossible in the hypothesis, that the

new world was originally peopled from the old. Although the present race of natives may have no knowledge of navigation, not enough to spread a sail to the wind, yet the ancestral stock, at the time of actual settlement, might not have been equally ignorant of every maritine art. In former ages, the Malayans, who were the red men of Asia, possessed the greatest part of the trade of India; their ships frequented all the coasts of Asia; extended from the east side of Africa their voyages nearly to the western coasts of America, a distance of about twelve thousand miles. They had planted numerous colonies on the islands, at this immense distance from their native country. It would surely have been much more easy to have found the continent of America, in which to put their colonies, than to have found so many small islands, at no great distance from the western shores of Mexico and Peru, whose inhabitants seem to indicate a descent from no very ignoble and ignorant ancestry.

Others have suspected, that the two continents were joined together. They had believed that America was once united to Europe or Asia, or was connected with both. In such case, both men and animals would have made their way to this quarter of the globe, while there was but one continent. The mighty agents of nature and the convulsions by earthquakes have produced similar effects, on a smaller scale, in every age. The high mountains in America still bear witness, that they were once subject to the dominion of the sea. Some whole states have their foundations with a thin soil on rocks of lime stone, which yet contain the entire figures of the shells of animals, whose essential element is the ocean. The sinking of immense quantities of earth beneath the sea would evidently have made way for the retiring of the waters of the mighty deep, and for the elevation of a more extensive and perfect world amidst the retreat and the ruins of the old. Evidences are supposed to remain of such an immersion in the consequent erection of numerous islands, which yet rear up their heads above the surfaces of the two oceans, as the tops of the old mountains and solitary relics of the everlasting hills.

Others have conjectured that, in high northern latitudes, a connection by land still exists between the west side of America and the east sida of Asia, while by this route the former country received her inhabitants from the latter. The discoveries of the enterprising Russians and of capt. Cook

the most distinguished of modern navigators have ascertained, that, if the two continents be not united entirely at the north, yet near the polar circle they are not more than 18 miles asunder. The savages are not known ever to have been entire strangers to the waters; and their ordinary birchen canoes are more than adequate to such passage. But were they not; chance or misfortune, winds and storms would sometimes have thrown them across such a narrow strait. Or had even these failed, still the piercing cold of that region would, during the greatest part of every year, have formed a bridge of ice, which would have given security to the most cautious traveller.

Another sect of philosophers were convinced of the practicability of peopling the western continent from countries bordering on the Baltic. The passage was easy, and had from high antiquity been successfully assayed, from the Baltic states to the Faroe Isles, thence to Iceland, a country, popularly and justly celebrated in former ages, thence to Greenland and from that country to America. The first part of this voyage was the longest and the most difficult; but this had been passed many times every year for ages. In the eighth century, when navigation was very little understood in Europe, a passage to America was well known, and the Norwegians had planted a colony in Greenland. Iceland had been settled by Europeans for ages prior to this. A landing once effected, the inhabitants, during a lapse of centuries, would spread from the northern regions to the southern cape, producing the extension of population we witness.

America is composed of two kinds of aboriginal inhabitants. One is that of the Esquimaux, who essentially differ from all the rest of Indians upon the continent. They are indeed dark in complexion, but their size is dwarfish, about four feet in height, faces long, noses compressed, eyes sunk, cheeks raised, legs and hands small, and structure feeble. They have settled on the northern parts of the continent, extended from Greenland to the coasts opposite to Kamachatka, and have spread over countries of nearly five thousand miles in extent. A sameness of features, stature, color, customs and still more of language has left no doubt, that the Esquimaux derived their descent from the same original race with the Laplanders, the Zemblans, the Samoyads and Tartars of the east. Some have indulged the opinion, that the natives from North and South America are from one orig

inal stock, emigrated from the North of Asia. Tradition among the natives themselves and some etymologies of language are the arguments used to strengthen this opinion.

Another class of Indians is made up of those who are more commonly styled Aborigines. These were found by the first European visitors, scattered over every section of the American continent. These are the red men of the new world, who are so well known as to scarcely need description, and whose striking similarity, and in all respects to each other seems to prove a sameness of ancestral origin. These are supposed to have originally come from Asia by means of a former union of continents, or from a northern passage, or from accidental trajection, or by proceeding from island to island till they reached the main. Chains of such islands are seen in the Pacific ocean along the hebrides, the Friendly, Society, Otaheitan, Marquesan, Easter and Fernandes isles to the richest parts of America; and, in the Atlantic we meet with the Canaries and the Cape Verd, and West Indian islands. These, and several other chains of islands in both oceans, would offer facilities of passage either to choice, or compulsion, during several thousand years, especially to those in a small degree acquainted with navigation.

If these chains of islands conducted the inhabitants of the eastern to the western continent, they would have first arrived at regions adjacent to Mexico and Peru, from which places time would disperse them towards either pole. The less wealthy and the more ignorant would be apt to try the fortunes of a new country from choice. The most enlightened places, like those of Mexico and Peru, might be those where they first settled; while information would be lost and the arts lessen, as their descendants should retire into more new and distant countries. Posterity would at length lose the remembrance of their origin, and forget many of the improvements of their ancestors. Cut off from easy connection with the enlightened inhabitants of the old world, ambition would, amidst innumerable obtacles against improvement, sink down by degrees into despair, or leave only rough and ferocious feelings to prey upon the mind. The entire destitution of the means of making improvement and cherishing the arts would increase the universal despondence. Instead of aiming at the elegancies of life, all their industry could procure only the precarious and scanty sustenance of animal life, while mental improvement would be little regar

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ded. The want of iron, the great arbiter of civilized life, would soon complete the ruin already commenced; and render savages what we find them. However uncertain may be our speculations on this subject, they will not be useless, if they induce us to observe more critically whatever facts time may disclose.