utter futility of their aquatic defences; for although the subjects of Montezu ma, knowing and anticipating the nature of the attack, came forth from the city in several thousand boats, these were so feebly constructed, and managed with so little dexterity, that in a few hours they were all destroyed, dispersed, or taken by the enemy.”

In surveying the nations of the globe, this inaptitude for nautical enterprise evinced by the American Indian, can scarcely be regarded as a “distinctive characteristic." The naval contest between the Mexicans and Spaniards finds a parallel case in the present warfare between the British and Chinese; and this latter people, who date back a national existence for thousands of years, have even now, in the nineteenth century, no flag in a foreign port. The fact that the navigation of the American aboriginal, since his long contact with European arts, has not been extended beyond rivers and lakes, finds an explanation in his natural inaptitude to conform to new customs and habits, as well as in his deficiency in mechanical invention. Even the Chinese, with advantages incalculably greater, are now in precisely the same condition; nor have they, at any time, evinced more nautical skill than did the persevering Incas, who, with log canoes and rafts of reeds, subdued the fierce islanders of Titicaca.

5. Manner of Interment." Veneration for the dead," says Morton, "is a sentiment natural to man, whether civilized or savage: but the manners of expressing it, and performing the rites of sepulture, differ widely in different nations. No offence excites greater exasperation in the breast of an Indian than the violation of the graves of his people; and he has even been known to disinter the bones of his ancestors, and bear them with him to a great distance, when circumstances have compelled him to make a permanent change of residence."

On the other hand, the Indian, obeying the dictates of his vindictive spirit, never loses an opportunity of exhuming the body of an enemy. So frequently did this occur in the recent Florida contest, as we several times ourselves witnessed, that the whites finally adopted the practice either of building large fires over graves, or

running the wagon-train over them, as a means of concealment.

But the manner of inhumation practised among the American natives, that is, placing the dead in a sitting posture, seems wholly peculiar. The legs are flexed upon the abdomen, and the chin is supported on the palms of the hands. To this conventional rite, all the American tribes, including the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, with occasional exceptions, conform. The Peruvians, however, did not inhume their dead, but placed them in a sitting posture, sowed up in sacks, on the floors of their tombs. But a most extraordinary exception to the custom in question has prevailed among various tribes throughout the whole extent of the two Americas, the body being dissected before interment, and the bones alone being deposited in the earth; but even in these instances, the custom of the sitting attitude, as the bones are often held together by their natural connections, may be still maintained. This practice, however, has been observed by some navigators among the Polynesian islands.

Having considered the leading characteristics of the American race, Dr. Morton next inquires whether they denote an exotic origin, or warrant the conclusion that this race is as strictly aboriginal to America, as the Mongolian is to Asia, or the Negro to Africa. After adverting to the various theories in regard to the origin of our Indian population, which generally trace them to an Asiatic source, he thus states his own conclusion:

"In fine, our own conclusion, long ago deduced from a partial examination of the facts thus briefly and inadequately stated, is, that the American race is essentially separate and peculiar, whether we regard it in its physical, its moral, or its intellectual relations. To us there are no direct or obvious links between the people of the old world and the new ; for, even admitting the seeming analogies to which we have alluded, these are so few in number, and evidently so casual, as not to in should it be hereafter shown, that the validate the main position: and even arts, sciences, and religion of America, tain that the organic characters of the can be traced to an exotic source, I mainpeople themselves, through all their endless ramifications of tribes and nations,

The Esquimaux, however, in accordance with general opinion, are excluded, as belonging to the Mongolian race. They "obviously belong," says Morton, "to the Polar family of Asia, pass insensibly into the American race, and thus form the connecting link between the two." On the western coast of America, in consequence of its proximity to Asia, the Esquimaux are much more numerous, and extend much farther south than on the eastern coast. "A redundant population," says our author, "has even forced some of them back to the parent hive, whither they have carried a dialect derived from the cognate tribes of America. Such are the Tsutchchi, who thus form a link between the polar nations of the two continents." These Indians of Mongolian origin have become more or less blended with what are more strictly aboriginal tribes.

Morton shows very satisfactorily that the peopling of America cannot be referred to regular emigration from Asia, whether, as some suppose, the Mongols arrived in large ships with all the appliances of war, or, in the opinion of others, that the whole population of America has been derived from the northwest angle, on the supposition of a continued chain of colonies during a long succession of ages, extending from Prince William's Sound to the extremity of Terra del Fuego, a distance of eight thousand miles. That civilized nations should have found their way from Central Asia to Central America through the cold and remote regions of Behring's Straits, whose austere climate has reduced its inhabitants to the lowest stage of humanity, seems beyond the range of all probability. Equally untenable is the Jewish theory, (strongly advocated by the late Lord Kingsborough, author of Mexican Antiquities), which refers the entire native American population to the ten lost tribes of Israel carried away by Salmanazar, King of Assyria. The difference of physical organization alone is, however, sufficient to set this question at rest for ever; but, independent of this, can it be supposed that the Jews, who, notwithstanding

scattered over every region of the globe, have ever remained a people so peculiar as to need no argument to prove their lineage, should, after having wandered into the new world, have lost every memorial of their history, language, laws, and religion? The hypothesis is too absurd to merit a serious examination. Besides, it has been recently announced to the world that the remains of the lost tribes have been discovered still existing in Asia.

It does not, however, hence follow that our aboriginal race is indigenous to the soil. On the contrary, it was shown, when on the subject of the geographical distribution of man, that, like plants and inferior animals, he becomes naturally diffused over the surface of the earth. It is well remarked by Lyell, whose language is previously quoted, that if all mankind were now cut off, with the exception of one family, we might expect their descendants, let this family be placed in the old or the new world, or even on a coral islet of the Pacific, to spread, notwithstanding they should never become more enlightened than the Esquimaux, over the whole earth in the course of ages. Experience, indeed, proves that whole families might drift on our northwest coast from Asia, or upon the shores of South America from Africa, or from Spain to the Azores and thence to North America. "The general prevalence of easterly winds," says Morton, is adverse to the colonization of America from the islands of the Pacific;" but this observation is not borne out by facts, as on the western coast of Mexico, between the eighth and twenty-second degrees of north latitude, there is a complete inversion of the trade-wind. Here, where we should expect a prevalent easterly wind, we find an almost permanent westerly current.

"To us," says Morton, as just quoted, "there are no direct or obvious links between the people of the old world and the new." Are we, then, to conclude that man has had distinct centres or foci of creation? This we presume is not the opinion of our author, but merely that the American Indian is as strictly aboriginal to the soil as the Mongolian is to Asia, or the Negro to Africa. But as there is no difficulty in explaining the geographical distribution of man from a single point,

and as all ethnographic researches, as we attempted to show in our August Number, prove the various races of man to constitute a single species, the position advanced above is the merest postulate. "Once for all, I repeat my conviction," says Morton, "that the study of physical conformation alone excludes every branch of the Caucasian race from an obvious participation in the peopling of this continent." Now if the principles developed in the Article just adverted to, are founded in nature, viz., that there is an intimate connection between physical features and moral and intellectual character, both of which are influenced by local causes, then does this last conclusion prove an utter fallacy. Time was, no doubt, when the present distinc tion of races did not obtain; and hence, at the period when man, in his gradual diffusion, reached America, the Caucasian race may scarcely have been known as a distinct variety.

The following extract from the "Library of Useful Knowledge" coincides, so far as accidental varieties in man are concerned, with our own views:

"The peculiarities which arose in the human species at a remote and unknown period, have become the characteristic marks of large nations; whereas those which have made their appearance in later times have, in general, extended very little beyond the individuals in whom they first showed themselves, and certainly have never attained to anything like a prevalence throughout whole communities. But this is a circumstance which it does not seem difficult to explain; if we consider that ever since the population of the world has been of large amount, the possessors of any peculiar organization have borne such a very small numerical proportion to the nation to which they belonged, that it is no ways surprising that they should soon have been lost in the general mass; still less that they should have failed to impress it with their own peculiar characters. In the early period of the world, when mankind, few in numbers, were beginning to disperse themselves in detached bodies over the face of the earth, the case was altogether different; and we can easily understand how, if any varieties of color, form, or structure, then originated in the human race, they would naturally, as society multiplied, become the characteris

tics of a whole nation,"

"This idea [the American race be

ing essentially separate and peculiar] may, at first view," says Morton, "seem incompatible with the history of man, as recorded in the Sacred Writings. Such, however, is not the fact. Where others can see nothing but chance, we can perceive a wise and obvious design displayed in the original adaptation of the several races of men to those varied circumstances of climate and locality, which, while congenial to the one, are destructive to the other." Much research and erudition have been employed by anthropological writers to establish the unity of the human family; but as difficulties, regarded as insuperable, have been encountered in tracing back the diverse varieties of mankind to the same single pair, some have cut the Gordian knot by calling in the aid of supernatural agency. Thus Morton, like others before him, thinks it, as expressed in his Crania Americana, "consistent with the known government of the universe to suppose that the same omnipotence that created man would adapt him at once to the physical as well as to the moral circumstances in which he was to dwell upon the earth." Now this supposed miracle did not, of course, occur until the dispersion of Babel; and, inasmuch as man is endowed with a pliability of functions, by which he is rendered a cosmopolite,-a faculty possessed in the highest degree by the inhabitants of the middle latitudes, there is not the slightest ground for the belief that it ever did occur, simply because no such special adaptation was demanded. The chief characteristics which distinguish the several varieties of man, viz., the comparative development of the moral feelings and intellectual powers, require no particular adaptaLeast of all, tion to external causes. could the American race have been endowed with an "original adaptation," "to the varied circumstances of cli mate and locality," inasmuch as the region inhabited by them embraces every zone of the earth through a distance of one hundred and fifty degrees of latitude.

It is thus seen that the attempt to obviate the difficulties encountered in Adam and Eve, the Caucasian and the the endeavor to trace back to the same Ethiopian races, by the assertion that "each race was adapted from he be