Aboriginal Race of America. 219 



to degenerate in the scale of civilization, as the Asiatics have 

 evidently done in travelling to the northward and eastward. 

 He has only to move forward a few hundred miles into the 

 wilderness, and settle himself at a distance from all civilized 

 men, and the process will advance with almost incredible 

 celerity. For, whether he conies in contact with savages 

 or not, in the dark recesses of the forest, his offspring will 

 speedily arrive at a state of complete barbarism." 



We confess our difficulty in imagining how the Polynesians, 

 themselves a barbarous people, though possessing some of the 

 attributes of civilized life, should become savages in the tro- 

 pical regions of America, wherein the climate must be as 

 congenial to their constitutions as their own, and the various 

 other external circumstances are calculated to foster rather 

 than to depress the energies of a naturally active and intelli- 

 gent people. But the general prevalence of easterly winds is 

 adverse to the colonization of America from the islands of the 

 Pacific ; for the nearest of these islands is one thousand eight 

 hundred miles from the American coast ; and when we reflect 

 on the many difficulties which the mere distance opposes to 

 navigation in small vessels, and the absolute necessity for food 

 and water for a long period of time, we feel compelled to be- 

 lieve that America has received very feeble if any accessions 

 to its population from the Polynesian islands. Such voyages, 

 if admitted, could only have been accidental ; for it is not to 

 be supposed that these islanders would have attempted remote 

 discoveries on the vast Pacific ocean in the very face of the 

 trade winds ; and a successful issue is among the least proba- 

 ble of human events. 



Even admitting that the Polynesians have accomplished 

 all that the theory requires, how does it happen that on reach- 

 ing the continent of America, they should all at once have 

 relinquished their intuitive fondness for the water, forgotten 

 the construction of their boats, and become the most timid 

 and helpless navigators in the world ? 



A comparison of languages, moreover, gives no support to 

 the Polynesian hypothesis ; for all the zeal and ingenuity 

 which have been devoted to this inquiry, have tended only 

 to disclose a complpte philological disparity. 



