evident in the colour of the skin and hair, in the defective beard, high cheek-bones, and in the direction of the eyes;" and that distinguished traveller alleges that the human species does not contain any races which have a greater resemblance to each other than the Aboriginal Americans, and the Mongoles, Mantchoros, and the Malays of the Asiatic continent. Among the Aboriginal nations of Anahuac, or Old Mexico, we find many remarkable coincidences. The ancient Chiapanese, who inhabited a district in Old Mexico, had a tradition that they came originally from the north, which directly alludes to the passage by Behring's Straits, and that their leader was a patriarch named Votan; and it is said that their painted histories contained a representation of the universal deluge. The Mexicans, we are told by Baron Humboldt, followed the same system in the division of the great cycles, and in the denomination of the years that compose them, with the Japanese, the people of Thibet, and other nations of Central Asia, from whom they were widely separated. Although," instead of the cycles of sixty years, of years divided into twelve months, and weeks of seven days, used among the nations of Asia, the Mexicans employed cycles of fifty-two years, years of eighteen months, months of twenty days, and, for the lesser divisions, half decades and half lunations of thirteen days, yet the system of periodical senes (the correspondent terms of which serve to denote the dates of the days and the years), being the same in both countries, and a great part of the hieroglyphic names by which the Mexicans denote the days of the month being the same which have been affixed to the signs of the Zodiac, from the remotest antiquity, among the nations of Eastern Asia, afford unequivocal proofs of a common design, or of the interchange of ideas." It is singular, also, as in the case of the Chiapanese, that several of the nations of Old Mexico had traditions, distinct, it would appear, from each other, of the universal deluge.

The ancient Mexicans termed the patri

arch who escaped, and preserved the human race, Corcor and Teocipactli: and by another tribe he was known by the name of Tezpi. But the most conclu. sive and the most singular fact is, that all the American nations who inhabit the eastern parts of that continent have traditions that they came from some remote country in the west, with the exception of the Esquimaux, who are traced also from the west by other indications; and every new discovery in the antiquities of America farther substantiates the fact of a great Asiatic migration. All the traces of ancient movements among the tribes converge in one quarter, and it is impossi ble that all existing nations could have found room together in the north-western quarter of America. Dr Barton informs us that the Cherokee Indians allege that their ancestors arrived from the west, and found the country which they now occupy inhabited by tribes of red men, who, they say, were moon-eyed people, and could not see in the day-time. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in describing the peo ple termed Chepeioyans, says that, according to their own account, they came from Siberia in Northern Asia, and that they agree in dress and manners with the Eastern Asiatics. "They have a tradition among them," says that accurate and distinguished writer," that they came originally from another country inhabited by very wicked people, and had traversed a great lake, which was narrow, shallow, and full of islands, where they had suffered great misery, it being always winter, with ice and deep snow. At the Copper-Mine River, where they made the first land, the ground was covered with copper, over which a body of earth has since been collected to the depth of a man's height. They believe, also, that in ancient times their ancestors lived till their feet were worn out with walking, and their throats with eating. They describe a deluge, when the waters spread over the whole earth, except the highest mountains, on the tops of which they preserved themselves." These are remarkable traditions, which illustrate

the sacred writings in a very conclusive manner, existing among races of men who had long ceased to have any communication with the countries whence they migrated. The Peruvians, who at the time of the Spanish invasion were in the highest state of moral cultivation, were originally masters of a comparatively small territory; yet the Incas, having the advantages of civilization, gradually extended their power on all sides, even beyond the Andes, and subjugated those countries to their sway. It is difficult to ascertain by what means this people were raised to such an eminence in social improvement, unless we take their own tradition, that the arts of life were communicated to them in a remote age by strangers who landed on their coasts. A near resemblance between the Peruvians and some of the Asiatic nations, such as the Chinese, the Koriaks, the Thibetans, and Japanese, has been noticed; and the conjecture is extremely probable, that the Incas were originally a tribe who happened to preserve the ancient manners, once common to the whole American family, derived from their common ancestors in Asia. In the Brazils there are numerous Chinese colonists; and the following observations on them by Von Spix and Martins, two distinguished naturalists recently sent thither by the king of Bavaria, are worthy of being quoted, as not only descriptive of these Chinese colonists, but as applicable to the whole American Aborigines. "The physiognomy of the Chinese was particularly interesting to us, and was in the sequel still more so, because we thought we could perceive in them the fundamental lines which are remarked in the Indians. The figure of the Chinese is indeed rather slender, the forehead broader, the lips thinner, and more alike, and the features in general more delicate and mild, than those of the Americans who live in woods; yet the small, not oblong, but roundish, angular, and rather pointed head, the broad crown, the prominent sinus frontalis, the low forehead, the pointed and projecting cheek-bones, the

oblique position of the small narrow eyes, the blunt, proportionally small, broad, flat nose, the thinness of the hair on the chin, and other parts of the body, the long smooth black hair of the head, the yellowish or bright reddish tint of the skin, are all characteristics common to the physiognomy of both races. The mistrustful cunning, and, as it is said, often thievish character, and the expression of a mean way of thinking and mechanical disposition, appear in both in the same manner. In comparing the Mongole physiognomy with the American, the observer has opportunity enough to find traces of the series of developments through which the Eastern Asiatic had to pass, under the influence of the climate, in order at length to be transformed into an American."

The proofs of America having been peopled by an Asiatic migration being so satisfactory, it is hardly necessary to allude to the other mode which is suggested, by which that continent could have been colonized, unless it be still farther to show the truth of the Mosaic account of the creation of the world, and that a general deluge swept away all the inhabitants of the Antediluvian world except those preserved in the Ark. Amongst the Aborigines, to whom we have already referred as existing in America, not a single European custom or feature has been observed, every external appearance indicating their Asiatic origin, and the people themselves differing in their habits, and in almost every particular, from the European nations. But it is almost certain, at the same time, that the northern part of America was colonized by an emigration from the opposite coast of Greenland, or of Iceland. It has been maintained by some historians, that at a period unknown in the chronological annals, some tribes of the northern inhabitants of Europe, stimulated by the spirit of bold adventure for which their descendants have been distinguished, emigrated from Norway to Greenland, and subsequently established themselves on the continent of America.

Iceland, which lies between Norway and East or Old Greenland, was discovered and colonized by the Norwegians, A.D. 874; and within one hundred years afterwards the same people planted colonies in Greenland, which received its name from the freshness and verdure of its shores, as contrasted with the vegetation of Iceland. Adventurers sailed from Iceland, Norway, and even the Orkney Islands, and a colony was established in Greenland, with which a commercial intercourse was kept up until the beginning of the fifteenth century, when by a sudden revolution of the elements all communication with the unfortunate colonists ceased. Attacked by the Esquimaux, and by a dreadful epidemic called the black death, which raged throughout Europe at the commencement of the fifteenth century, that colony became extinct, it is admitted, in the ensuing century. Greenland, the name of which is now associated with masses of ice, frozen seas, and wintry desolation, was at one time supposed to form part of the continent of America; but it is now ascertained, from the recent discoveries of navigators, to be an immense island, separated from that continent by an arm of the Asiatic Ocean, although compre hended in that circle or quarter of the world. If the venerable Norwegian bishop, Hans Egede, is to be believed, and his authority is generally authentic, Greenland at one time well deserved its name; and he describes the churches, villages, and pleasant fields which the Norwegian colonists possessed, the sites and the soil of which are now bound up for two-thirds of the year by frost, and covered with snow several feet thick. That the Esquimaux, who inhabit that district of North America which stretches from Labrador to the North Pole, emanated from this country, is clearly established from the fact that, in their form, manners, and customs, they completely resemble the -Greenlanders; and again, these bear such a striking resemblance in external appearance to the Samoiedes and Kamschatkans of Northern Asia, that they

race.

are generally believed to be the same There is another very singular coincidence, that the language of the Greenlanders and the Esquimaux is the same; one of the indefatigable Moravian missionaries, who proceeded from Greenland to the American shores, assuring us that the language of Greenland was completely understood by the Esquimaux, who received him in their own way with the greatest kindness. Here, too, are seen the effects of climate in a most conclusive manner on the human frame. At one extremity of the American continent we find the Patagonians, a race upwards of seven feet high, and at the other the Esquimaux, whose stature rarely exceeds four feet and a half, a man of five feet and a half being considered by them of gigantic height. This diversity of nature is strictly in accordance with the general theory respecting climate. In the favoured and warm region of Patagonia, where the inhabitants attain to such a stature as has made their appearance to be grossly exaggerated by the credulous, the wild animals are also large, and the loftiest trees of the forest are to be found; whereas in the icy regions of the Esquimaux, even the hardy pines which endure the severe cold of North America, if they make their appearance at all, soon dwindle into stunted shrubs, becoming dwarfish in size, like the human frame. We insist no farther, however, on this part of the discussion, which is chiefly introduced to show how untenable are the arguments of those writers who attempt to invalidate the Mosaic history, by starting doubts as to the peopling of America from the Old World. It is clear that the numerous American tribes originated in a great migration from Behring's Straits, with the exception of those now specified, who came from the north of Europe. Such animals as the wolf, the bear, the fox, the elk, the deer, and the roebuck, are found in Labrador, and the regions of the Esquimaux, as well as in Old Greenland, from which they originally emigrated-additional proof that both

continents had in early times a mutual communication.

Probable Hypothesis respecting the Deluge. But those who have speculated on the apparent impossibility of America having been peopled from Asia, have also taken refuge in natural history. They have alleged that animals are known to exist in the Old World which are not found in the New, and, reversing the statement, that there are animals in the New World which have never been seen in the Old. They have also alleged that, admitting the fact of an animal as well as a human migration by Behring's Straits from Asia, it could only be encountered by the animals of northern latitudes, and not by those of warm climates, such as the lion, tiger, and alligator, which nevertheless exist in the New World, and yet these could not pass either by the north of Europe or by Behring's Straits, because they could not endure the cold of these high latitudes, and therefore their migration, if it is contended that there was also a migration of animals, must be accounted for in some other way. These objections, which were started in the infancy of natural history, appear to be founded on the theory adopted by Linnæus with respect to plants that all plants whatever had the beginning of their existence in one tract of the earth, and that they were all thence gradually dispersed over the world. In explaining this theory, which he keenly defended, Linnæus held that for a certain time the habitable world was limited to a small tract, the only portion of the earth which had been laid bare by the cessation of what he terms the primeval ocean, which he supposes originally covered the whole world; and that in this spot or tract were congregated all the originals of plants in existence in the globe, together with the first ancestors of the human race, and of all animals. That he might accommodate the habits and natures of so many creatures, Linnæus farther supposed that the scene of the Creation was situated in a warm region, containing at the

VOL. I.

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same time a mountain range on the heights, in the declivities of which were to be found all temperatures and every clime, from the torrid to the frigid zone. But this theory is abandoned by almost every scientific writer. It is now ascertained that every region of the globe has plants and animals peculiar to itself; and the only hypothesis on which can proceed is one which is well expressed by an able writer, that "after the last catastrophe which destroyed the living beings on the earth, a great variety of new animal tribes were created; that each was placed on the spot to which its powers and functions were best adapted; and that from this as a centre, it was left to spread by such means of locomotion as nature had provided it with." If we admit this hypothesis, we are saved from the necessity of attempting to explain what cannot be explained, namely, how it was that animals, which we know can only live in a warm climate, should have wandered from Armenia through the frozen regions of Siberia, Behring's Straits, and Northern America, and passing all the intermediate regions, have located themselves in the plains of the Amazon and Plata Rivers. We can thus admit, what no naturalist now disputes, that most of the animal tribes of the New World never existed in the Old, which is confirmed by the fact, that the animals common to the old and new continents belong to the Arctic region, and to those tribes capable of enduring the same degree of cold which exists at Behring's Straits. "It might indeed be conjectured," says Dr Prichard, "that the Deluge recorded in Genesis, and of which all ancient nations had similar accounts, was perhaps not universal in the strict sense of the word, as it is now understood. The whole earth, Kol Aoretz, which is said to have been submerged, might be only all the oxovin,' or habitable world; it might only extend to the utmost limits of the human race, and other regions, with their peculiar organized creatures, might have escaped; and this hypothesis might perhaps be main

H

tained without doing any violence to the sacred text, of which every expression has received a divine sanction. But geological phenomena, and a variety of considerations, render it most probable that this Deluge was universal. It is known that the fossil remains of animals which have been discovered in various parts of the earth, and which appear to be relics of the Antediluvian world, chiefly belonged to species different from those which now exist. These species were probably exterminated in that great catastrophe. Mankind escaped by the means which are recorded in the sacred and in many profane histories, and with them were saved the stock of animals peculiar to the region in which, before the Flood, they had their dwelling, and of which they, and most of the early domesticated animals, are in all probability the native inhabitants. After the Deluge, when new regions emerged from the ocean, it is probable that they were supplied with organized inhabitants suited to the soil and climate of each district. Among these new races, man, and the tribes which had survived with him, and which were his companions, spread themselves in a later time. The silence of the Scriptures in respect to such facts is of little importance. It is not to be presumed that these sacred books contain a narrative of all that it has pleased Divine Providence to effect in the physical creation, but only of his dispensations to mankind, and of the facts with which man is concerned. And it was of no importance for man to be informed at what era New Holland began to contain kangeroos, or the woods of Paraguay ant-eaters and armadilloes."

Nations and Divisions of the Country in Ancient Times.-The Scriptures make no mention of many of the empires and nations of Asia now in existence, such as the Chinese and Mogul Empires, the Hindoos, and those numerous tribes who inhabit the extensive region of Siberia or Asiatic Russia. India is specifically mentioned in the Book of Esther, in reference to the extensive dominions of King

Ahasuerus. But we have the MedoPersian branch of the Indo-European nations who inhabited Asia, of whom the Medes and ancient Persians, the Parthians, and the Armenians, are mentioned in sacred history; and among the nations of Asia Minor, we have the Phrygians, the Mysians, and the Bithynians. Of the ancient western Asiatic nations, those connected with sacred history are the Elamites, or descendants of Elam; the Assyrians, or descendants of Ashur; the Hebrews, and Idumeans, or Edomites; the Beni-Yoktan, or Arabs; the Chasdim, or Chaldeans; the Aramans, who inhabited Syria and Cappadocia, who are the Proper Semitic or Syrian nation (called Semitic, according to some learned though perhaps fanciful etymologists, especially German writers, from Shem, the son of Noah, from whom, in the table of nations in the Book of Genesis, many of them are declared to have descended); the Phonicians, or descendants of Canaan; the Mizraim, or Egyptians, remotely allied to the Semitic; the Cushites, or Ethiopians; and the Philistines, a branch of the Mizraim. The other nations of this vast continent-such as the Georgians, the Caucasians, and those of Northern Asia connected with Eastern Europe, the Samoiedes, the Mongolians, the Tartar or Turkish race, the Tungusians, Koriaks, and Kamschatkans, the Chinese, Thibetans, Burmese, Siamese, and Anam, all IndoChinese nations, many of whom are celebrated in the annals of history-it is no part of the plan of this work to describe, as they are unconnected with the geography, the statistics, or the history of the sacred record. The early history of Asia is lost in antiquity, and the obscurity which pervades it is by no means dissipated by the brief notices contained in the sacred record, and in the Greek historians of the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires. The whole of this continent was generally divided into Asia Major and Asia Minor; but the term Asia Minor was not in use among the ancients, with whom the general name for Upper and Lower Asia was simply Asia. Asia Major