was accidental, and so was the discovery of Brazil, in the year 1500, by a Portuguese fleet, which in its route to the East Indies departed so far from the African coast, in order to avoid certain winds, as to encounter the western continent.

But let us return to the opinion of Morton relative to the physical characteristics of the American Indian. That he "stands isolated from the rest of mankind," is an opinion contrary to the whole tenor of our former remarks, in the Article above referred to, show ing that the typical peculiarities of all races are so blended that an absolute line of demarcation among them is wholly impracticable. There is, in truth, a striking physiognomical resemblance between our aboriginals and the people of Eastern Asia, as has been frequently observed by the most competent judges. The Tunisian envoy to the United States in 1804, for example, on seeing the deputies of the Cherokees, Osages, and Miamis, assembled at Washington, was instantly struck with the strong resemblance between their physical characteristics and that of the Asiatic Tatars, with whose appearance he was familiar.

Let us, however, view this part of the subject somewhat more in detail. In the general classification of mankind it is seldom that two writers coincide. Thus, whilst Cuvier makes the distinction of three races, MalteBrun has no less than sixteen. The division of Blumenbach, consisting of five varieties, is the one most generally adopted, the distinguishing characters of which were presented in our August Number. Although in the typical examples of these five primary divisions, a very marked difference is observable, yet we find them all running into each other by such nice and imperceptible gradations, that it is often impracticable to determine, independent of the individual's locality, to what family of the human race he belongs. The Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian, may be considered the leading types of mankind, that is, they are merely typical examples of extreme diversity; and hence the American and Malay can be regarded as only intervening shades, the former holding a middle point between the Caucasian and Mongolian, and the latter maintaining a similar relation to the Cau

casian and Ethiopian. This gradation, but in a less perceptible degree, is, indeed, evidenced in every quarter of the globe. Comparing, for instance, the inhabitants of New Zealand with the neighboring black Malayan tribes, a striking difference is presented, the superior castes of the former being tall, active, and well made, with a brown complexion and long black hair, sometimes straight and sometimes curling; and accompanying these advantages of person, there is a corresponding degree of intellect,—a relation which, as was satisfactorily shown, as we conceive, in our Number for August, is a permanent law of the human organization. The natives of the Friendly Islands are a still much superior race. Generally of the ordinary European stature, some are above six feet high; their color, like that of the New Zealanders, is a deep brown, verging in the better classes on a light olive; and their features, in some respects, approximate to those of the European. As a proof of their progress in civilisation and in intellectual development, it is only necessary to mention that they have terms to express numbers up to one hundred thousand. Among the Otaheitans, who have been long celebrated for their personal beauty, although the same brown tint pervades among the lower orders, yet it becomes so gradually lost in those of a superior caste that the skin in the higher ranks is nearly white, or at least but slightly tinged with brown: on the cheek of the women a blush may be readily observed. The usual color of the hair is black, but it is of a fine texture, and not unfrequently brown, flaxen, and even red. Of the natives of the Marquesas, it has been said that, "in form they are, perhaps, the finest in the world," and that their skin is naturally

very fair;" whilst in the color of their hair all the various shades found in the different tribes of the Caucasian race are exhibited.

It is thus seen that the white skin, the red cheek, and the color and texture of the hair, are merely typical characteristics of the Caucasian race,

a subject that we elucidated at considerable length in our former Article already referred to. Even among Caucasians of undoubtedly pure race, there are nations of a decidedly black complexion. As regards the hue of the skin, the same

diversities exist among the American variety. The usual designation of "copper-colored," is considered by Dr. McCulloch as wholly inapplicable to them as a race; and he proposes the term "cinnamon-colored." Dr. Morton, however, thinks that, taken collectively, they would be most correctly designated as the "brown race. Although the Americans," he says, " possess a pervading and characteristic complexion, there are occasional and very remarkable deviations, including all the tints from a decided white to an unequivocally black skin." Hence it is obvious that all typical peculiarities become so modified, altered and evanescent, that to draw an absolute line of demarcation among five, or any other number of varieties of the human family, is totally impossible.

This, the physical consideration, is one of the premises upon which Dr. Morton bases his conclusion, that "the American race is essentially separate and peculiar," and that "there are no direct or obvious links between the people of the old world and the new. The only distinctive physical characteristic established by Dr. Morton, as pertaining to the American Indian, is, in our opinion, a "peculiar physiognomy;" but as this peculiarity belongs equally to every other nation, as the German, French, and English, of the Caucasian variety, or even to the various tribes composing the American variety, and, indeed, to the remote subdivisious of every people constituting families, we cannot yield to the opinion that, on this account, our Indian constitutes a race "essentially separate and peculiar." Whilst on the subject of the physical characteristics of our Indian, reference may here be made to the sugar-loaf formation of the ancient Mexican and Peruvian skulls,-a conformation which led many to believe that these people constituted a race of mortals sui generis. That this cranial configuration is natural, was maintained by Gall, Cuvier, Morton, and other naturalists and anatomists, on the ground that the skulls do not present the lateral expansion found among other tribes who have this artificial formation,-an opinion that we earnestly combated in our previous article. And we now refer to it only to express our gratification, in seeing lately a renunciation by Dr. Morton, of the opinion that these

heads afford no evidence of mechanical compression. This frankness on the part of Dr. Morton' does him infinite honor, proving that he is a philosopher in the true sense of the word.

"I was at one time," says Dr. Morton, "inclined to the opinion, that the ancient Peruvians, who inhabited the islands and confines of the Lake Titicaca, presented a congenital form of the head entirely different from that which characterizes the great American race; nor could I at first bring myself to believe that their wonderfully narrow and elongated crania resulted solely from artificial compression applied to the rounded head of the Indian. That such, however, is the fact, has been indisputably proved by the recent investigations of M. D'Orbigny. This distinguished naturalist passed many months on the table-land of the Andes, which embraces the region of these extraor dinary people, and examined the desiccated remains of hundreds of individuals in the tombs where they have lain for centuries. M. D'Orbigny remarked, that while many of the heads were deformed in the manner to which we have adverted, others differed in nothing from the usual conformation. It was also observed that the flattened skulls were uniformly those of men, whilst those of the women remained unaltered; and again, that the most elongated heads were preserved in the largest and finest tombs, showing that this cranial deformity was a mark of distinction. But to do away with any remaining doubt on this subject, M. D'Orbigny ascertained that the descendants of these ancient Peruvians yet inhabit the land of their ancestors, and bear the name of Aymaras, which may have been their primitive designation; and lastly, the modern Aymaras resemble the common Quichua or Peruvian Indians in everything that relates to physical conformation, not even excepting the head, which, however, they have ceased to mould artificially."

As the mode of flattening heads pursued at the present day by the Indian tribes termed Flat Heads, inhabiting the lower part of the Columbia River, cannot but be interesting to the reader, the following description by Catlin, not however remarkable for perspicuity of language, is presented. The subject is a Chinook woman, with her infant in her arms undergoing the process of

destructiveness," these characteristics can be considered merely as the extreme of passions common to all mankind, not only in the savage state, but, under certain circumstances, in the condition of the highest civilisation. Without referring to the barbarous excesses of nations equally uncivilized, behold Rome, even in her most palmy day, when she was wont to drag in chains her barbarian captives from the remotest frontier to swell the triumphal pomp of a successful general! Britain and Thrace thus yielded up their noblest spirits, that spurned the yoke in vain, to die for the amusement of Roman ladies! Compelled to enter the amphitheatre of wild beasts and the arena of the gladiator, the captives

were

“ Butchered to make a Roman holiday." Behold next the historic page of not only civilized but Christianized man. Look at the bloody horrors of Murat's Spanish campaigns, or of the guerilla war in the same country, under Marshal Soult. The Frenchman crucifies the Spaniard by nailing him to a tree, and the Spaniard retaliates by nailing a Frenchman to the same tree, the dying groans of the one being the prelude to the fierce agonies of the other! Prisoners that fell into the hands of the French were subjected to military execution,-a measure retaliated by the Spanish with much barbarity. Villages that made opposition to the French were delivered up to the licentious fury of the soldiery, who spared neither age nor sex. It may be safely asserted that some of the wanton cruelties of modern civilisation are unparalleled by all the outrages on humanity ever committed by our children of the forest. The cannibal of the French Revolution not only tears asunder the limbs of his innocent fellow-citizen, but drinks the blood and eats the heart of his victim! Look at the bloody "massacres of September," during the Reign of Terror. Can it be believed that the same people of our own enlightened age,-men who pretended to wisdom and philosophy, roasted alive, in heated ovens, the women and children of the Vendean insurgents; that they instituted modes of wholesale murder, termed "republican baptism," and "republican marriage;" and that they subjected the

Lyonnese to indiscriminate slaughter, until the very steel of the guillotine was blunted!

These moral convulsions, which tear up the elements of society, throw a fearful light on the ferocity of human nature, hidden under the arts and pleas ures of civilized nations. They are like the convulsions of physical nature, which disclose volcanic fires beneath fertile and flowery fields.

But let us pursue this subject a little further. The most refined states among the ancients regarded strangers and enemies as nearly synonymous. The fleet of Athens was exceedingly addicted to piratical excursions. Among Greeks and Romans it was long held that prisoners taken in war had no rights, and might lawfully be put to with their wives and children. A purer death, or sold into perpetual slavery, system of public morals in regard to international law finally gained ground. The cruelties of Marius in the Jugurthine war, for example, are reprobated by Sallust as contra jus belli. In the latter ages of the Grecian and Roman empires, the law of nations became highly cultivated and adorned by philosophy and science; but the irruption of the northern tribes of Scythia and Germany swept away all sense of national obligation, and threw back so ciety into that condition in which a stranger and an enemy are regarded as not dissimilar, destroying all commer cial intercourse, and fostering eternal enmity among nations. The annals of Europe were again deformed by piracy, the murder of hostages, the custom of considering slavery a legitimate consequence of captivity, and selling shipwrecked strangers into bondage. As the great powers of Europe became gradually allied by similar institutions, manners, laws, and religion, the code of international law progressively improved, until Grotius finally reduced it to the certainty and precision of a regular science. Even after his time it was considered lawful by Christian powers to invade and subdue Mahometan and other pagan countries, merely for the propagation of the Christian faith, without other cause of hostility.

It is thus seen, contrary to the opinion of Morton, that the cruelty of our Indian is not without a parallel,—a remark that applies equally to his love of vengeance. A Scotch Highlander,

wronged by an individual of another clan, for example, retaliated on the first of the same tribe that fell into his power. The feuds of the Corsican become hereditary: vengeance is taken by one family upon another, the actors in which may have been unborn at the period of the original quarrel.

3. Intellectual Faculties.-"I venture here to repeat," says Morton, "my matured conviction that, as a race, they [the American variety] are decidedly inferior to the Mongolian stock. They are not only averse to the restraints of education, but seem for the most part incapable of a continued process of reasoning on abstract subjects. Their minds seize with avidity on simple truths, while they reject whatever requires investigation or analysis. Their proximity for more than two centuries to European communities has scarcely effected an appreciable change in their manner of life; and as to their social condition, they are, probably, in most respects the same as at the primitive epoch of their existence. Such is the intellectual poverty of the barbarous tribes; but, contrasted with these, like an oasis in the desert, are the demi-civilized nations of the new world; a people whose attainments in the arts and sciences are a riddle in the history of the human mind. The Peruvians in the south, the Mexicans in the north, and the Muyscas of Bogota, between the two, formed these contemporary centres of civilisation, each independent of the other, and each equally skirted by wild and savage hordes. The mind dwells with surprise and admiration on their Cyclopean structures, which often rival those of Egypt in magnitude; -on their temples, which embrace almost every principle in architecture except the arch alone; and on their statues and bas-reliefs, which, notwithstanding some conventional imperfections, are far above the rudimentary state of the arts."

As regards the Intellectual Faculties of our aboriginal race, the opinion of Morton partakes also of an ultra nature. The general inaptitude of Indian character to conform to new laws and customs, it has been shown by experience, presents no insuperable barrier to their gradual civilisation. The Choctaws and Cherokees, and the Creeks to a considerable extent, aban

doning the venatic life, have become an agricultural people. Advancing in the useful arts, the acquisition of knowledge and property has gone hand in hand; and in proportion as mental cultivation has taught them the value of salutary and uniform laws, they have become capable of enjoying the blessings of free government. The Cherokees live under written laws, one feature of which is the trial by jury. The Choctaws are rapidly advancing in civilisation. In an agricultural point of view, their country resembles the new frontier of white settlements. They understand the value of money, and possess the comforts of domestic life, such as the common luxuries of tea, coffee, and sugar. They cultivate Indian corn and cotton, have large stocks of cattle, and have cotton-gins and mills of different kinds, as well as mechanical shops. In these three tribes, likewise, the rising generation have the advantage of schools, a portion of the annuity received from our government being appropriated to that purpose.

No

That the American aboriginal is susceptible of civilisation is proved by the single fact that three contemporary centres of civilisation, each independent of the other, existed in the tropical regions of our continent. The circumstance of each being skirted by wild and savage hordes, notwithstanding all are derived from a common stock, is not without ample analogies, as adduced by Morton himself, among the inhabitants of the old world. stronger example," he says, "need be adduced than that which presents itself in the great Arabian family; for the Saracens who established their king. dom in Spain, whose history is replete with romance and refinement, whose colleges were the centres of genius and learning for several centuries, and whose arts and sciences have been blended with those of every subsequent age; these very Saracens belong not only to the race but to the same family with the Bedouins of the desert; those intractable barbarians who scorn all restraints which are not imposed by their own chief, and whose immemorial laws forbid them to sow corn, to plant fruit trees or to build houses, in order that nothing may conflict with those roving and predatory habits which have continued unaltered