CHAPTER I . 



GENERAL OPINIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OP POPULATION 



IN THE NEW WORLD. 



After the discovery of America, the minds of the learned and ingenious were 

 much exercised to account for its habitation by men and animals. On the pre- 

 sumption that all the varieties of the human race were descended from a single 

 pair, and that after the flood the earth was indebted solely to the ark of Noah for 

 the replenishment of man and beast, the manner in which these reached the 

 western world became to scholars and divines a subject of anxious inquiry. The 

 complete isolation of the newly-discovered land was not, it is true, immediately 

 suspected; and Columbus and Vespucius both died in the conviction that they had 

 only touched on portions of Asia. Indeed, so late as 1533, it was maintained, by 

 the astronomer Schoner, that Mexico was the Quinsai of Marco Paulo. But when 

 this was ascertained to be a vast continent by itself, separated by broad oceans or 

 by frozen barriers from the rest of the globe, the solution of the mystery of popu- 

 lation became a matter of intense philosophical interest ; and the materials relied 

 upon for such a solution, drawn from sacred and profane history, and the writings 

 of ancient philosophers, poets, and geographers, were employed to sustain a great 

 diversity of opinions. As these materials have continued -to be reproduced in 

 various combinations, and the hypotheses they suggested are constantly repeated by 

 modern theorists, it becomes essential to an understanding of the subject, not only 

 as formerly regarded, but in its existing position, that they should be succinctly 

 enumerated. 



While most authors have been content to go no further back in their specula- 

 tions than the period of the division of the earth among the descendants of Noah, 

 there are others who take a less limited flight, and assume a still earlier date for 

 the peopling of America. It has been held that the earth before the flood was one 

 mass of land, and that, when this was broken at the deluge, Providence made pro- 

 vision to save a remnant of people in every country, although we have accounts of 

 what happened in one continent only. 1 It has been argued, from differences in 

 the animal kingdom, many of whose species would not survive transportation, 

 that they must have been originally bred where they are found ; and it has been 

 maintained that, according to the prevailing traditions of antiquity, Paradise was 

 without the eastern continent, and beyond the ocean. 2 



1 Burnett's "Theory of the Earth," Lond., 1684. a Ibid. 



