242 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



rally diffused through the native tribes, but not their 

 principal portion. Even the most determined advo- 

 cates of the original unity of the races reject the Esqui- 

 maux, who are admitted to be of an Asiatic stock, 

 when they should also reflect, that in the northern por- 

 tion, several tribes of the present Indians, such as the 

 Iroquois, confess, that they dwelt themselves in the high 

 north, before they migrated to their present habitation ; 

 while the Tschutski of Eastern Asia are assumed to be 

 of the American stem ; accommodating the conclusion 

 to a reversed order of migration, which, with singular 

 inconsistency, admits the practicability, on hypothetical 

 grounds, in favour of utter savages, what it refuses to 

 the ancient and middle ages of great and organized 

 nations, who were navigators both on the east and west 

 of the New World ; and for times, when facilities for 

 that purpose were apparently more at hand than in 

 later ages ; for, by strangely reversing the natural order 

 of human dispersion, another, and probably not an in- 

 considerable transition from Asia is disregarded ; one 

 which, being taken in connection with the more imme- 

 diate facility, by an entire, or almost an entire com- 

 munication by land, when Behring's Straits had not yet 

 greatly widened, obviated all serious difficulty. At that 

 period not only Esquimaux, but Finnic, and the north- 

 eastern Caucasian races, hereafter to be mentioned, had 

 no doubt inducements which brought the parent fami- 

 lies of the high nosed and other nations of North 

 America to that continent ; and the influence of rigo- 



