42 DR. DANIEL WILSON ON 
statement that “there is not, indeed, any such positive similarity in words or grammar as 
would prove a direct affiliation. The likeness is merely in the general cast and mould of 
speech, but this likeness is so marked as to have awakened much attention.” (*) 
Assuming the affinity thus based on a general likeness in cast and mould of speech to 
be well founded, there need be no surprise at the lack of any positive similarity in words 
or grammar; for, used only as a test of the intervening time since Basque and Red Indian 
parted, it points to representatives of a prehistoric race that occupied Europe before the 
advent of Keltic or other Aryan pioneer, long prior to the historic dawn. And if the inter- 
vening centuries between that undetermined date and the close of the fifteenth century, 
when intercourse was once more renewed between the Iberian peninsula and the trans- 
atlantic continent, sufficed for the evolution of all the successive classic, mediæval and 
renaissance phases of civilisation in Europe: what was man doing through all those cen- 
turies in this New World? A period of time would appear to have transpired ample 
enough for the development of a native American civilisation; but neither the languages 
nor the arts of the Indian nations found in occupation of the northern continent reveal 
traces of it, nor does archeology disclose to us evidence of any precursors. Whatever 
their origin may have been, the Red Indians of this continent appear to have remained 
for unnumbered centuries excluded by ocean barriers from all influence of the historic 
races. But on this very account an inquiry into their history, in so far as this may be 
recoverable from archzeological or other evidence, may simplify important ethnical problems, 
and contribute results of some value in reference to the condition and progress of primæval 
man elsewhere. 
In Europe man can be studied only as he has been moulded by a thousand external 
influences, and by the intermixture of many dissimilar races. The most recent terms of 
ethnological classification, the Xanthocroi and Melanochroi are based on the assumed inter- 
blending of widely dissimilar races in times long anterior to any definite chronology. 
There was a time, as is assumed, when the sparsely peopled areas of ancient Europe 
were occupied exclusively by a population, still imperfectly represented by the Finns, the 
Lapps, and the Basques. Those are supposed to be surviving fragments of a once homo- 
geneous population of Europe in prehistoric centuries. On this the great Aryan migration 
intruded in successive waves of Celtic, Slavic, Hellenic and Teutonic invaders, not without 
considerable intermixture of blood, to which is still traced the Melanochroi of Britain and 
western Europe. Such is the great ethnical revolution by which it is assumed that that 
continent was recolonised from the same Asiatic cradleland from whence India and Persia 
derived their ancient civilized and lettered races. 
In the year 1493 began another ethnical revolution by which the Aryan, or Indo- 
European stock intruded, in ever increasing numbers, on a like aboriginal population of 
the New World. The disparity between the first Celtic or other Aryan immigrants into 
Europe, and the aborigines whom they encountered there was probably less than that 
which separated the first American colonists from the Red Indian savages whom they dis- 
placed. In both cases it was the meeting of civilised and cultured races with rude nomads 
whom they were prone to regard with an aversion or contempt very different from the 
repellent elements between conquering and subject nations in near equality to each other. 


(*) Indian Migrations, p. 24. 
