40 CONJECTURES. 



I must here remark that the distinctions I have 

 just drawn, as so decidedly existing between 

 the two races, did not, at first view, present 

 themselves in such force, probably because the line 

 of separation is not rigidly followed ; but I have 

 nevertheless no doubt of their correctness. I am 

 indeed inclined to believe that greater or less 

 amalgamation occurs. I cannot speak positively as 

 to marriage, but I know that natives of St. Lawrence 

 Island who bear the type of the sea-coast tribes, and 

 have become prisoners by the chances of war or ship- 

 wreck, have passed from one owner to another in the 

 capacity of slaves, and, by concubinage, increased the 

 difficulty of discriminating between the races. Never- 

 theless, a recurrence of reflection upon this subject 

 has convinced me that, as before said, there were two 

 races present here, one indigenous to the continent, if 

 not to the immediate soil, the other, voluntary or 

 accidental immigrants from the adjacent land of 

 America. 



I will not, indeed, exclude the view that possibly, 

 at a period of great antiquity, the Esquimaux on 

 the American coast, west of the Mackenzie river, 

 may themselves have emigrated from the Asiatic 

 continent, since there is an evident dissimilitude, 

 in many resi)ects, between them and those to the 



