304 Mr. Ranking on the American Tribes. 



With respect to the earliest rude inhabitants of America, the 

 general uniformity of the mass of the population justifies 

 the conjecture, that they were from Tartary. Oguz the Turk, 

 the Csesar of Asia, resided near the source of the Tobol, it is 

 supposed about b. c. 700. He and his successors probably 

 caused the construction of the great wall of China, and those 

 commotions may have given rise to emigrations to America. 

 The fisheries at the mouth of the Lena and other rivers, for 

 the valuable ivory tusks of the walrus, (called by the natives 

 mammoth,) are mentioned in the Chinese history 2300 years 

 ago; and it is conjectured by Russians, that the fishermen 

 have sometimes been blown to America, upon fields of ice ; the 

 American history supports this assertion. — Conquest of Mexico ^ 

 ch. xii. But the rise of the modern Turks in the sixth, and 

 of the Moguls in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries produced 

 the tremendous convulsions which have supplied the New World 

 with the bulk of the inhabitants, and with all those among 

 •whom any considerable degree of civilization was found. 

 There are two modes of influx of people, one by the islands, 

 and across Behring's Straits, which consisted, probably, of 

 masses of fugitives, who inhabited above the lat. of 40°; 

 the other by sea*. In 1283, when Kublai personally governed 

 the whole of China, all India beyond the Burrampooter, Thibet, 

 Tangut, and about half of the eastern portion of Siberia, his 

 nearest relations were (under his control) sovereigns of the 

 rest of the continent of Asia, (Arabia excepted, and Hindostan, 

 till Timur's invasion and Baber's conquest.) This wilt ac- 

 count for there being found some Malays, Chinese, white 

 people in ChiU f, and probably some, of slenderer form, 

 resembling Lascars or Gypsies, from Bangalla, but these are 

 very partial exceptions to the general mass. *• The Moguls 

 were illiterate at the epoch in question; Kublai having ordered 

 letters to be invented for his nation, by a Thibetian, whom 

 he rewarded with the dignity of Grand Lama. More than fifty 

 dialects are spoken between Moscow and China, where the 



* In estimating the number that may have arrived by seji, it must be considered, 

 that chiefs of such superior civilization as those from China, would soon establish 

 their command over similar people wlio had arrived by land before the Moguls 

 conquered China. 



f As mentioned in the valuable work of Messrs. Yates and Moulton ; who give 

 reports of a few Welsh, not wholly void of possibility, p. 45, 



