on the Original Population of America. 9 
the Alleghanies well-defined traces of ancient fortified cities 
or camps; great sepulchral tumuli, the work of unknown 
nations; for nearly all traditionary knowledge among the 
different tribes now existing in these localities accounts for 
their arrival from the north-west or the north, at periods 
apparently not exceeding seven or eight centuries’ distance 
from the present time, excepting with a few, who have puerile 
legends, ascribing their descent from beavers, elks, rabbits, 
trout, and even from a species of moth and snail. That 
these are not more aboriginal than the rest, is proved by the 
languages they speak being mere dialects of those who 
acknowledge an immigration, and by the general physical 
similarity of their persons. 
From California to Chili there are, however, far more 
numerous remains of departed nations, not wholly admissible 
as the work of Toltecs, of Astecs, Anahyuacans, or of Peru- 
vians. From the shores of the Pacific eastward, a system 
of civilization had waxed and waned more than once, not 
entirely self-created, and in some places not without western 
elements, but, in the main, worked out into a homogeneous 
character ,exclusively its own. The pyramids of Cholula, 
near Mexico.—which bear more affinity to the Morais of the 
Friendly and Society Islands than any other work of the 
kind—might, indeed, be the consequences of human reason 
under similar circumstances adopting similar ideas, if they 
did not also stand as landmarks of a marine route, since we 
find them connected with Indo-China, by similar works in 
Java, &c. But ina later class of buildings, temples, palaces, 
and the ruins of great cities in Yucatan, &c., there are bas- 
relief figures of gods, heroes, attendants, and captives, remark- 
able for their lengthened proportions, aquiline noses, and flat- 
tened occiputs, of which we find living types only among the 
lofty tribes of northern Indians, although in the antique bury- 
ing-places of Peru there are numerous instances of skulls 
similarly flattened at the back, but with totally distinct cranial 
characters. The aquiline-faced race was, therefore, at some 
anterior period, possessed of civilization and power in tropi- 
cal America, sufficient not only to leave its physical charac- 
teristics impressed on ideal personages, but even to serve as 
