THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 171 



subject of social and political union, I may allude to another considera- 

 tion as affecting our national progress and permanence. It has been 

 observed by a distinguished French naturalist that mountain ranges 

 which run east and west establish much more striking differences with 

 regard to the dwellers on the opposite sides tlian those ranges which 

 extend north and south, a statement confirmed by observation through 

 the history of mankind. The Scandinavian Alps have not prevented 

 the countries on both sides being occupied by a people of common de- 

 scent, while the feeble barrier of the Cheviot hills and the Highlands 

 has served to keep the Anglo-Saxon and the Celt apart even in a period 

 of advanced civilization. The Spaniards and the Italians differ more 

 from their neighbors across the mountains extending east and west 

 than the former from the Portuguese, or the Piedmontese from the 

 Provengals. Of this physical law of civilization and the destiny of 

 races the most remarkable illustration is perhaps to be found in the sepa- 

 ration, which continued through so man}^ centuries of ancient history, 

 of the races that occupied the northern coasts of the Mediterranean and 

 the races that dwelt in Central Europe. There is no more remarkable 

 fact in the history of mankind ; and the barrier which so wondrously 

 preserved this separation between populous nations comparatively so 

 near to each other, was that east and west mountain range, which ex- 

 tends from the western extremity of the Pyrennees, at the shores of 

 tlie Atlantic eastward, to the shores of the Caspian. It was a parti- 

 tion that remained unbroken by either the southern or the northern 

 race, with rare and only partial exceptions, until at length the time ar- 

 rived for those vast irruptions by which a new civilization was to take 

 the place of the ancient and the Roman. The application of this law 

 of Nature to our own race occupying this continent is manifest, and it 

 is of momentous interest in connexion with the origin, the extension, 

 and the perpetuity of the Union. The mountain ranges, great and 

 small, extend in a northwardly and southwardly direction, but none in 

 that direction wdiich seems to have a power for partition over the races 

 of men. It is only conventional lines running east and west that per- 

 plex the nation. 



The physical character of the territory occupied by these colonies 

 which where to become the thirteen United States, was favorable to 

 the establishment of Union. Further, it may be regarded as favorable 

 to the same result that during the colonial period no addition of territory 

 took place which might have introduced an incongruous element, un- 

 manageble material to be brought into union. In making this remark, 

 I have especially in my thoughts the failure of Cromwell's plan for se- 

 curing his then recent conquest of Jamaica by co-operation with Massa- 

 chusetts in planting a New England colony there. The Protector's 

 proffered gift of a West India island was dechned by the practical good 

 sense of the general court of the colony: and thus the community which 

 was destined to grow in compact strength on their own soil was saved 

 from being parted into two communities with the ocean between them. 

 The interview between Cromwell and Leveret, the agent of the colony, 

 as narrated by the latter in hisdespatch to Governor Endicott, (Decem- 

 ber 20, 1656,') is curiously characteristic on the one hand of that intense 

 and deep policy which is part of the mystery of the Protector's cha- 



