6 Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton Smith 
It is, indeed, evident in the context of the expressed infer- 
ences, that identity with the Malay race, or an exclusive 
Mongolic extraction, is far from bemg a fact admissible 
without very considerable qualification: but there is a ten- 
dency in philosophical researches, as well as in fashion, to fol- 
low in the wake of certain favoured opinions, where given 
reasonings are for a time admitted to be conclusive, and re- 
ceive all the support of dogmatic authority, until they are 
undermined by time, or suddenly overthrown by the disclosure 
of some new undeniable fact. The original population of 
the Western Continent, perhaps above all other speculative 
crotchets, has been, and occasionally continues to be, a theme 
of this kind, particularly among that class of day-dreamers 
who neither understand physiology, nor think it important to 
investigate and compare the languages of those regions. 
Among the more ancient writers, several did not scruple to 
make and overcome all sorts of difficulties ; they embarked 
in the strangest fancies, and, even in more recent times, there 
have been authors who were able to dwell with satisfaction on 
the discovery of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, or the Welsh 
followers of Madoc, who, according to their fancies, were the 
progenitors of the whole or of a part of the present indige- 
nous race. But though, perhaps, neither of the above asser- 
tions is entirely erroneous, there is evidence in every direc- 
tion of the probability that men of different stocks had reached 
the Western World at very different times and from different 
quarters. We think His Highness might have gone further 
in his admissions, and at once have allowed the considerable 
admixture of a Caucasian element in the races of America, 
whether the progenitors of that stock reached their destina- 
tion by a western course from Europe, from some submerged 
Atlantis, or whether a Guanche tribe went by successive 
stages from Africa, and within the certain course westward 
of the trade-winds and currents, or a people proceeded by an 
eastern route from the South Sea Islands, the Aleuthian 
chain, or from the mouth of the river Amur, whither a Cau- 
casian tribe appears to have lost its way among the chains 
of the Kuan-Lun and Thien-chan mountains at a most remote 
period of human existence. 
