i88 Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute [vol. x 



of Bering Strait. Like the modern Asiatic Eskimo, they represent a 

 reflux from America to Asia and not vice versd''} 



What made the learned doctor reach such a conclusion I entirely 

 fail to see. This seems to me against every bit of evidence, therefore 

 gratuitous, and some might almost say in defiance of common sense. 

 The perusal of the foregoing pages, which were not written to antagonize 

 such an assumption, since at the time I did not even know of it, will, 

 I believe, have convinced any reader that it cannot be consistently 

 entertained. 



In this connection, I cannot refrain from quoting from a letter 

 which a prominent physiologist, Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, addressed to me at 

 a time when I thought of presenting the present essay to a scientific 

 body he represents. Speaking of my conclusions, my learned corres- 

 pondent wrote: 



"I only trust that they do not relate to the plausibility of the Asia- 

 tics, or any part of them except the Eskimo, being of American origin. 

 I have paid a good deal of attention to that question since several 

 years, and have made, as you doubtless know, a fairly long trip through 

 Siberia and Mongolia, the results of which all tend to sustain the theory 

 of the Asiatic origin of the Americans, while pointing to the utter im- 

 probability of a migration at any time in the opposite direction. 



"The latter peculiar notion, by the way, is a very old one; you will 

 find it expressed quite strongly as early as 1836, in Coates (Mem. Soc. 

 Pa., Ill, Part 2, page 6) ; but it is wholly superficial and takes no account 

 of the fundamental and inflexible laws of human migration, namely 

 those of movement in the direction of least resistance, or of the greatest 

 material prospects, both of which laws point surely much more forcibly 

 from Asia to America than the reverse "- 



These remarks, from a scientist with whom I am not otherwise in 

 full community of opinion and who had himself such splendid oppor- 

 tunities to study the subject, must be conclusive. They fully confirm 

 my contention that the present North American Indians, or at least 

 the Denes, came from Eastern America, as has been fully established in 

 the foregoing pages. 



1 Ibid., p. 56. At the very latest hour I received from the same author communication 

 of a pamphlet entitled "Remains in eastern Asia of the Race that peopled America", from 

 which I cull one of the concluding paragraphs. "The writer", he says, "feels justified 

 in advancing the opinion that there exist to-day over large parts of eastern Siberia, 

 and in Mongolia, Tibet, and other regions in that part of the world, numerous remains, 

 which now form constituent parts of more modern tribes or nations, of a more ancient 

 population (related in origin perhaps with the latest paleolithic European), which was 

 physically identical with, and in all probability gave rise to, the American Indian". 



Whereby it will be seen that, quite independently of each other, Dr. Hrdlicka and 

 I have reached indentical conclusions on this momentous question. 

 ' Letter to the writer, Washington, D.C., June i, 1914. 



