216 Distinctive Characteristics of the 



There is a third view of this question which remains to be 

 noticed ; for, allowing that the Eskimaux and the cognate 

 Polar nations are not the progenitors of the American race ; 

 and admitting also that the Mongols of central Asia could 

 never have arrived in any requisite number by a direct voyage 

 from one continent to the other, yet it is supposed by many 

 learned men that these Mongols could have reached America 

 by slow journeys from their own distant country ; and that 

 their hieroglyphic charts delineate many of the incidents of 

 their journey : but there is no positive evidence in regard to 

 direction and localities, although these, by a very general 

 consent, are placed in the north and northwest. Cabrera, on 

 the contrary, after the most patient research, aided by unusual 

 facilities for investigation, traces the primal seat of the civil- 

 ized nations of America to southern Mexico, where the ruined 

 cities of Copan, Uxmal and Palenque, point to an epoch seem- 

 ingly much more remote than any antiquities contained in the 

 present metropolis of that country. 



If we conventionally adopt the more prevalent opinion, and 

 trace the Aztecs back to California or the strait, we have after 

 all but a vague tradition of a handful of persons, who, for all 

 we know to the contrary, may have been as indigenous to 

 America as any people in it. The aborigines of this conti- 

 nent have always been of nomadic and migratory habits ; a 

 fact which is amply illustrated in the traditional history of 

 Mexico itself. So also with the barbarous tribes ; for the Le- 

 nape, the Florida Indians, the Iroquois, the insular Charibs and 

 many others, were intruding nations, who, driven by want, or 

 impelled by an innate and restless activity, had deserted their 

 own possessions to seize upon others which did not belong to 

 them. These nations, like their more polished neighbors, 

 were in the constant practice of recording the events of their 

 battles and hunting excursions by hieroglyphic symbols, 

 made, according to circumstances, on trees, skins or rocks ; 

 and this rude but expressive language of signs, has been justly 

 regarded as the origin of the picture-writing of the Mexicans. 

 *' The difference between them," observes Dr. Coates, '^ does 

 not appear greater than must necessarily exist between igno- 



