should be no communion between the guilty mother and the innocent daughter. Angela seemed to her the seraph whose smile was to win for her admission into the heaven her crimes had forfeited. She had longed for the hour to come when their intercourse could be more frequent; for in her she hoped to recall the long gone days of virtue and happiness.

Disappointed in these hopes, and baffled in the schemes of ambition she had for years been forming, the incensed Baroness now ardently desired revenge; and she resolved to make the young and unknown stranger her in

strument.

"He is your friend; he can be easily induced to reveal to you the secret of his retreat," cried she to Theodore, with flushed cheek and flashing eye. "Before this flight is blown abroad, he must die-and by your hand."

Theodore stood silent, as if waiting the commands of his patron

ess.

"You hear me-you understand me" exclaimed she quickly. "Wealth, unbounded wealth, shall be yours. I will secure it to you the instant you bring me news that-"

"I cannot play the assassin," muttered Theodore.

"Who asks it of you? But your arm is strong; for what do you wear a sword? Challenge him as my champion-defend the honor of my child whom he has basely allured, or, perhaps, forced to accompany him. I look to you to avenge me!"

"I will do it!" cried Theodore wildly, and rushed from the room.

The Baroness was walking backwards and forwards in her garden. The night had already fallen, and she was awaiting with impatience the issue of the duel she had so hastily commanded. She began to repent having urged the young stranger, whom she already regarded with something like affection, into the hazard of his life. But in whom else could she confide? How else should she re-obtain her Angela before the disgraceful news of her elopement should have spread over the city!

The Baroness looked, all beautiful as she was, more like a woman distraught than the lofty lady. Her cheeks were

crimsoned with excitement; a dark fire was in her eyes; her hair was disordered. If she stood still for a moment, the violent beating of her heart, and trembling of her limbs, were apparent. She heard the gate open; then a rustling among the foliage; and her figure became suddenly rigid, and her face blanched to deadly paleness. Theodore strode towards her; in the dim light she saw he was dreadfully agitated. He flung his bloody sword at her feet.

"Is he dealt upon?" asked she, faintly. "And Angela

Angela is safe." "Where is she? where is my child?"

“With Lothaire her husband, whom she loves above all the world; for whom she has willingly resigned her proud though hapless station. They must be by this time beyond the frontier."

How! you have not fought with Lothaire? You did not kill him ?" "I am his friend. I aided him to carry off his bride."

"You"

"Yet more-I counselled him to the

act."

Ungrateful wretch! base impostor! And you hope to escape my vengeance!"

"Another vengeance than yours is about to overtake me. But hear me yet a word. Seventeen years ago you had another daughter, fair as Angela! You had a husband-you had a son! Answer me Where is your husband? Where are your children? Where is Emilie ?"

Not a word came from the heartstricken Baroness.

Theodore went on:

"You cannot answer-you are speechless. But I can tell you! Your husband perished by treachery. Left to struggle unaided against his enemies-betrayed by one he had once esteemed his friend! Poor Emilie died in a hospital, the victim of want-hav ing endured privations innumerable, yet happy in that she was taken in innocent childhood! She died—yes, while her guilty mother revelled in luxury and princely pomp! Fernan do"

woman interrupted him; but not yet A piercing shriek from the miserable was his awful mission fulfilled.

As Americans, no part of Anthropology, or the Natural History of Man, can be more interesting to us than that of our Aborigines. From time immemorial, the vast theatre of the western hemisphere has been thronged by numberless inhabitants. Whilst many tribes of these people have lived and died without leaving a trace of their sojourn on the face of the earth; others, as in tropical America, at the period of its Spanish discovery, were a polished and cultivated race, living in large and flourishing cities. There is a third class of Aboriginals, still more ancient and more civilized, known only by their monumental antiquities, scattered over the United States, South America, and the intermediate region The recent investigations of Stephens, Norman, and others, among the ruined cities of the southern states of North America, have revealed the monuments of a people, who constitute now perhaps the most interesting enigma in the history of the world.

In regard to the origin of the American nations, many theories have been advanced. In the present inquiry, however, the object of our author is not to trace their genealogy to Malays or Mongolians, to Jews, Hindoos, or Egyptians; but to prove from the most characteristic traits of this people, that, with the exception of the Esquimaux, they "are of one race, and that this race is peculiar, and distinct from all others."

As any remarks on this topic by the author of "Crania Americana," with whom our readers have a prior acquaintance, cannot be without value, we propose to review somewhat in detail his five principal considerations, viz., the organic, moral, and intellectual characters of the American Indians, their mode of interment, and their maritime enterprise; together with such definite conclusions as our author deduces from these premises.

1. Physical Characteristics.-Upon

this point, Dr, Morton sums up in the following language:

from the southern extremity of the conti"Thus it is that the American Indian, nent to the northern limit of his range, is the same exterior man. With somewhat variable stature and complexion, his distinctive features, though variously modified, are never effaced; and he stands isolated from the rest of mankind, identified at a glance in every locality, and under every variety of circumstances; and even his desiccated remains which have withstood the destroying hand of time, preserve the primeval type of his race, excepting only when art has interposed to pervert it,"

In our Number for August last, (Art. I.,) we attempted to show that all the diverse races of man have descended from a single stock. In elucidation of the subject, we brought to our aid comparative physiology; and, on the presumption that the great diversity and the dispersion of the human race are regulated by some general plan, analogous to that observed among plants and inferior animals, the laws of the distribution and migration of the latter were also investigated.

In order to show that there is nothing in the relative position of America that forbids the supposition of an exotic origin of its Aborigines, we will here present at the outset the known facts in relation to the geographical distribution of man. The probable birth-place of mankind-the centre from which the tide of migration originally proceeded-has always been, on the assumption that the whole human race has descended from a single pair, a matter of speculation with many; and that this birth-place was situated in a region characterized by the reign of perpetual summer, and the consequent spontaneous production, throughout the year, of vegetable aliment adapted to the wants of man, has always been a favorite conjecture. From this point, with the progress of

human population, men would naturally diffuse themselves over the adjacent regions of the temperate zone; and in proportion as new difficulties were thus encountered, the spirit of invention was gradually called into successful action. In the early stage of society-the hunter period-mankind from necessity spreads with the greatest rapidity; for 800 acres of huntingground, it has been calculated, do not produce more food than half an acre of arable land. Thus, even at a very early period, the least fertile parts of the earth may have become inhabited; and when, upon the partial exhaustion of game, the state of pasturage succeeded, mankind, already scattered in hunter tribes, may soon have multiplied to the extent compatible with the pastoral condition. In this manner may a continuous continent, in a comparatively short period, have become peopled; but even the smallest islands, however remote from continents, have, with very few exceptions, as for instance St. Helena, been invariably found inhabited by man,— -a phenomenon sus ceptible of satisfactory explanation.

The often observed circumstance of the drifting of canoes to vast distances, affords without doubt an adequate explanation of the fact, (on the supposition that the human family has had one common source), that of the multitude of islets of coral and volcanic origin in the vast Pacific, capable of sustaining a few families of men, very few have been found untenanted. As navigators have often picked up frail boats in the ocean, containing people who had been driven five hundred, one thousand, and even one thousand five hundred miles from their homes, there is nothing in the geographical position of America that precludes the supposition of a trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific origin of its aborigines. A number of such instances are related by Lyell, on the authority of Cook, Forster, Kotzebue, and Beechey. A Japanese junk, even so late as the year 1833, was wrecked on the northwest of America, at Cape Flattery, and several of the crew reached the shore safely. Numberless instances of this kind might be cited. In 1799, a small boat containing three men, which was driven out to sea by stress of weather from St. Helena, reached the coast of South America in a month-one of the

men having perished on the voyage. In 1797, twelve negroes escaping from a slave ship on the coast of Africa, who took to a boat, were drifted, after having been the sport of wind and wave for five weeks, ashore at Barbadoes. Three natives of Ulea reached one of the coral isles of Radack, having been driven, during a boisterous voyage of eight months, to the amazing distance of one thousand five hundred miles. The native missionaries travelling among the different Pacific insular groups, often meet their countrymen, who have been drifted in like manner.

"The space traversed in some of these instances," says Lyell, “was so great, that similar accidents might suffice to transport canoes from various parts of Africa to the shores of South America, or from Spain to the Azores, and thence to North America; so that man, even in a rude state of society, is liable to be scattered involuntarily by the winds and waves over the globe, in a manner singularly analogous to that in which many plants and animals are diffused. We ought not, then, to wonder, that during the ages required for some tribes of the human race to attain that advanced stage of civilisation which empowers the navigator to cross the ocean in all directions with security, the whole earth should have become the abode of rude tribes of hunters and fishers. Were the whole of mankind now cut off, with the exception of one family, inhabiting the old or new continent, or Australia, or even some coral islet of the Pacific, we might expect their descendants, though they should never become more enlightened than the South Sea Islanders or Esquimaux, to spread in the course of ages over the whole earth, diffused partly by the tendency of population to increase, in a limited district, beyond the means of subsistence, and partly by the accidental drifting of canoes by tides and currents to distant shores."

Thus has the earth been widely peopled in the earliest periods of society; and in later times, as some nations became maritime, important discoveries were made by accident. In the year 862, Iceland was discovered by some mariners bound for the Feroe Islands, who had been thrown out of their course by tempests. The discovery of America by the Northmen