168 Dr Morton on the Distinctive Characteristics of the 
diversity of languages, and pursuing each other along the 
huge ridge of the great American Andes, from Prince Wil- 
liam’s Sound in the far north, to the extremity of Terra del 
Fuego, a distance of one hundred and fifteen degrees of lati- 
tude, or of eight thousand miles. This long succession of 
occurrences is absolutely necessary to the theory, which is 
thus liable to the difficulty of requiring two extensive hypo- 
theses at once. Several hundred colonies must be imagined 
to have issued from the same point all completely isolated, 
as their languages abundantly shew, unconnected by peace- 
ful intercourse, but urging each other, by war and the de- 
struction of the game, throughout a third part of the cireum- 
ference of the globe. 
“The traces of such a series of human waves would be 
naturally looked for in a tendency to advance population in 
the north, from which they emanated, and where the pres- 
sure must have been greatest, and the colonization of longest 
duration. Nothing like this is observed: the population of 
South America, and of Darien, Guatimala, and Mexico, being 
much greater in proportion than that of any country farther 
north. The marks of civilization, too—one of the most im- 
portant proofs of long residence in a fixed: spot—are all, as 
in the older world, in favour of the tropical climates.” * 
We may further inquire, how it happens that during the 
lapse of more than three hundred years since the discovery 
of America, there has not been an authenticated immigra- 
tion from Asia? The long and desolating wars which have 
driven whole nations from the central to the northern parts 
of that continent, have not supplied a single colony to the 
New World. Nay, if such colonization had occurred within 
a thousand or two thousand years, would we not now possess 
more indubitable evidences of it in language, customs, and 
the arts ? 
We propose, in the next place, to make a very few observa- 
tions in reference to the idea that America has been peopled 
* On the Origin of the Indian Population of America. By B. H. 
Coates, M.D. 1834. 
