PHYSIOLOGICAL RESEARCHES. 99 



Dr. Pickering's map, prepared to exhibit his view of the distribution of the races 

 of men, assigns the whole of the two continents of America to the Mongols, 

 excepting a portion of the western coast of North America, and some islands of 

 the Gulf of Mexico, which he yields to the Malays. In the text of his work he 

 mentions the possibility that the Malay race is more widely extended than is 

 represented in the map ; and he is disposed to attribute to that race whatever is 

 authentic in the accounts of " black aboriginals" as geographical considerations 

 render it improbable that any third race had reached America prior to the European 

 discovery. 1 



At San Francisco, where there were many Polynesians, he found it difficult to 

 distinguish them from the natives of California ; the only perceptible difference 

 being in the hair, which among the islanders was wavy or curled, while that of the 

 Californians was uniformly straight. The manufactures, habits, and customs of the 

 latter, in his estimation, notwithstanding " a strong American impress," bore equal 

 indications of Polynesian affinity. He remarks that, while to persons living around 

 the Atlantic shores, the source of aboriginal population seems mysterious, had 

 writers upon the subject made a voyage to the north Pacific, much of the discussion 

 would, in his opinion, have been spared ; as it was only on visiting that part of the 

 world, that the whole of the matter seemed to open to his view. For while the 

 facilities of transit along the northern coast of the Pacific, by means of land-locked 

 passages are, perhaps, unparalleled, the climate is genial for the latitude, and the 

 means of subsistence are abundant. In the chain of population he found no break. 

 He also regarded the Polynesian groups and Japan as favorably situated for com- 

 munication with California, notwithstanding their distance, on account of the winds 

 and currents that tend from them to the latter; exemplified, in the case of Japan, 

 by the chance arrival of tempest-tost junks on our northwest coast. 2 



The circumstances adduced in support of the common idea that the Aztecs came 

 from the direction of Oregon, such as the terminal "tl" so characteristic of the 

 Mexican language, and found also among the Chinnooks and Nootkas, with other 

 resemblances, in costume, modes of dressing the hair, forms of sculptured pipes, &c, 

 are sustained by his testimony ; and, in addition to these direct references of origi- 

 nal population to particular exotic sources, he advances the scientific opinion that 

 " it could be shown, on zoological grounds alone, that the human family is foreign 

 to the American continent. 



Col. Smith considers the decay of the American races, amounting to prospective 

 extinction, a proof that they are not a typical people, but are stems, such as are 

 alone liable to annihilation. He holds that there exist sufficient coincidences of 

 manners, practices and language, between the natives of this continent and those 

 of eastern Asia, to overthrow the hypothesis of an exclusively aboriginal species 



1 Yet, in another passage, he speaks of having met, in a few instances, in the United States, with a 

 race which was neither Mongolian nor Malay, and which he terms "the Telingan or true Indian." 

 P. 281, Bohn's ed. 



9 See, in this connection, Humboldt's "matured opinions,'' Views of Nature. Bohn's ed., 1850, 

 pp. L31-3. 



