ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 119 
saint, only a differentiated form of the same tendency. The gods of antiquity 
were partly impersonifications of natural forces, and partly deified men. 
They often bear the same relation to facts that shadows do to forms, being 
at worst but simple distortions of the truth. Few nations can examine im- 
partially the substratum of their ancestral religious creeds. How often do 
we find in dogmatic theology the imprint of early paganism? The Hawaiian 
nation is supposed to have a considerable antiquity. From time immemorial 
there have been persons appointed by the government to preserve, unim- 
paired, the geneology of their kings, which in 1863 embraced the names of 
more than seventy. Allow an average reign of twenty-five years, this would 
throw their history back 1,750 years, to A. D. 117 or earlier, say to about the 
Christian era. 
It was a custom throughout the islands of the Pacific to exterminate their 
enemies, either by killing or setting them adrift in canoes. The latter prac- 
tice not only led to the peopling of the various Polynesian islands, but was 
also a cause which led to cannibalism, for want compelled the exiles to sub- 
sist on each other, and a taste once indulged in, was continued by survivors 
who succeedeed in reaching some island, and thus cannibalism became estab- 
lished. North American Indians have never been cannibals. 
When Spaniards first visited America, the western equatorial regions of 
the continent were the seats of extensive, flourishing and powerful empires, 
whose inhabitants were well acquainted with the science of government, and 
had evinced considerable progress in art. Roads fifteen hundred miles long, 
remain in Peru, relics of the past, as ancient as the Appian way. In very 
remote times social etiquette was observed and universally respected. The 
early Peruvians constructed suspension bridges across frightful ravines, and 
moyed blocks of stone as huge as the Sphinxes and Memnons of Egypt. 
They built aqueducts of baked clay and constructed dykes and causeways, 
and preserved a memory of past events by picture writing. They had a lan- 
guage of ceremony or deference, with reverential nouns and verbs, with which 
inferiors addressed superiors, a feature of resemblance to the Chinese in 
Eastern Asia. 
Ruins of extensive cities and fortifications are now found in Yucatan and 
regions of Central America; the elevated plains of Bogota and Cundinamarca; 
the open valleys of Peru; and the lofty, secluded and highly fertile tracts of 
Chili. These colossal remains of ancient primitive civilizations are passing 
from the memory of a degenerate offspring, who now behold with indo- 
lent amazement these interesting relics of their illustrious predecessors. The 
origin, history and fate of these powerful nations of America, who have left 
behind them such colossal memorials of an ancient civilization, is a study 
of profound interest. Stones, thirty by eighteen by six feet, are squared 
and hewn and reared with utmost exactness. Their style of arch is peculiar. 
Temples, pyramids, tumuli, and fortifications, with remains of buildings of 
singularly massive architecture, often exquisitely carved, betokens a civilized 
antiquity. 
It seems impossible that these people should have passed from the conti- 
nent of Asia by Behring’s Straits, for no traces of any such people remain 
anywhere along that route. 
