on the Original Population of America. 5 
operation. Meanwhile, in America, that portion of the ab- 
original race which still exists undevoured by the mild pro- 
cesses of the civilized encroacher, and which, as it will not 
bow to servitude, must submit to extermination, is fast be- 
coming (that is, in the exact proportion of its decrease) the 
theme of romantic story ; and when the last tribe shall have 
been effaced, the stoical virtues of the red warrior shall ob- 
tain full credit with the “ pale faces” of the Caucasian stock, 
and rise into more deserved, because more real, grandeur 
than the Titans, the Pelasgi, or the Scythians of the poetical 
Kast. 
As it was not to describe the Anglo-Americans that the 
Prince undertook his voyage, but to become acquainted, by 
personal research, with the natural productions of North Ame- 
rica, its mineral and vegetable riches, its zoology, and, above 
all, its fast vanishing indigenous nations, it is in relation to 
these aboriginal tribes that the work before us is particularly 
valuable, being written from notes dating, in point of time, two 
or three years before the travels of the benevolent Catlin, 
whose narrative, when speaking of those nations which were 
observed by the Prince, notices the same chiefs and braves ; 
and they mutually illustrate each other. Where the more 
extensive and varied intercourse of the American author 
among the whole range of Red tribes occasionally rectifies a 
slight mistake, the German diary, particularly where the re- 
marks bear upon the natural history, origin, and languages, of 
this race, develops a more profound knowledge of the zoolo- 
gical condition of the questions at issue, a greater and more 
varied historical research, and the power of comparing the 
different dialects, extinct and spoken, of that part of the 
Western Continent. A previous personal study of the native 
clans of Brazil afforded another signal advantage for compa- 
rison ; and the facility which the Prince possessed of com- 
municating with such authorities as Humboldt, Blumenbach, 
and many other celebrated investigators of Germany, both in 
the physiology and linguistics of America, give the more 
weight to his opinions, and make them all the more accepta- 
ble, because they are not offered in the form of peremptory 
conclusions. 
