78 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
_ the Siberian members of their linguistic family. Grammars of the Malay 
or Javanese, of Tahitian, Samoan or Tongan, of Efatean or Australian, 
and such collections of words as those in Crawford’s and Wallace’s 
Indian Archipelago, and in Mr. Horatio Hale’s Ethnology and Philology 
of the U.S. Exploring Expedition will complete the outfit for a compara. 
tive study of the languages of the Old World and the New. 
The records of the Siberian monuments, the histories of Japan and 
the Loo-Choo Islands, the brief documents of the Mound-Builders, and 
the chronicles of Mexico fix the arrival of the exiles from Northern Asia 
to the shores of this continent in the early part of the eighth century. 
The displacement of the tribes of Malay-Polynesian origin by them and 
their successors indicates that the islanders must have preceded the men 
of the north in the occupation of American soil. This is confirmed by 
the fact that there are no traces of Hinduism among the American tribes 
of oceanic derivation, an influence which made itself felt at least as early 
as the fifth century in the islands of the Malay Archipelago nearest to 
India. In that century began the pressure of numerous and warlike 
bodies upon the civilizations of the East and of the West. There were 
no Goths nor Vandals in the East but there were Indo-Scyths, Avars 
and Huns, who created great displacements of population both in north- 
ern and in southern Asia, and when the alternative was offered the 
weaker parties of exile or extermination at the hands of the conquerors, 
it is not to be wondered at that, in the large and well-provisioned junks 
and war prahus of ancient days, thousands of fugitives committed them. 
selves to the mercy of the waves, and, by the same process that peopled 
the Loo-Choos and the Meia-co-shimas, and gave inhabitants to Madagas- 
car, New Zealand, and the Sandwich Islands, found their way to the 
more distant American shore. 
Our Indians are no new unsophisticated race or races in whose per- 
sons and achievements the problem of social evolution may be studied. 
They are the remnants of great nations long grown old and almost faded 
out of memory. Their divine, regal and princely names, such as Tockill 
and Tammany, Huascar, Yupanqui, Montezuma, Hiawatha and Tharon- 
hiawakon, are Old World names disguised, names of men who held regal 
sway in Babylonia and Assyria, in Palestine and in lgypt, when the 
Semite was of little account and the Aryan was hardly heard of. | The 
history of our American peoples, in so far as we can recover it, is the 
key tothe ancient history of the world when Turanian and sub-Semitic 
races were kings of men. Their position now, relative to what it was in 
antiquity, is like that of Dr. Schliemann’s palæolithic find at Hissarlik 
just above Priam’s Treasury of Ilion. The Siberian civilization of the 
Mound-Builders, the Japanese civilization of Mexico, New Granada and 
Peru, had they been fostered instead of destroyed by Spanish and other 
invading hands, might have emulated those of more favoured regions, 
