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found in Kamtschatka, or the neighbouring Islands? They made 

 answer that, sometimes, they were driven on Shore by easterly Winds, 

 when, for Want of Wood in the Island, they used to take them and 

 make Use of them". 



The same element that carries wood one way over the sea can cer- 

 tainly help carry people another way, when a different season contributes 

 to give it another direction. 



The question of the possibility of a migration from Asia to America 

 is therefore fully solved. We know it to be not only possible but easy, 

 and we are further certain that it has been accomplished by individuals. 



But is such migration probable in the case of large bodies leaving 

 their ancestral homes for the unknown regions of a new world? Why 

 could not the natives of America have originated in the country they 

 now inhabit? 



The consideration of a few undeniable facts in connection with the 

 original state of this hemisphere will help us in the solution of these 

 problems. Some of them will even aid us in determining the quarters 

 from which our Indians must have migrated. 



IV. 



It is generally conceded that there never was a continent so sparsely 

 peopled as was aboriginal America. Was this because of the barrenness 

 of the soil or the severity of the climate? The white races there estab- 

 lished at the present day have given an emphatically negative answer 

 to the first part of this question, and, as to the second, the particular 

 lay of the land ensures therefor as much temperate, or warm, as cold 

 climates. 



In the name of what principle, then, shall we surmise that, after 

 having been the cradle of the human race, America should have been 

 left almost deserted by its original population who, in that supposition, 

 must have rushed to the dreary wastes of northern Asia and the moun- 

 tainous regions of its centre, the cold forests and marshes of Europe, 

 or the sun-burnt sands of Africa? Such hypotheses cannot be taken 

 seriously. 



A second incontestable fact is that, despite the sparseness of the 

 aboriginal population of the New World, there is not an equivalent 

 part of the earth where so many ethnologically distinct races can be 

 found within any given area. " Choose any tract of the old world where 

 you think most languages spoken, then select an equal space at random 

 in any district of America peopled by native tribes, and the latter will 

 assuredly give a greater number of various tongues". 



