MODERN ORIGIN OF AMERICA. 745 



of South America, Mexico, and the West Indies, 

 while it is well known that large districts in 

 Chili, Mexico, and other parts of the country, 

 have been raised several feet within the last few 

 years. But as if the recent origin of a Continent 

 were a proof of inferiority, Dr. Caldwell rejects 

 the hypothesis as " a calumnious fabrication, in- 

 vented for the purpose of depreciating the new 

 world." 



Others have maintained, that if America had 

 been peopled from Asia, the natives would not 

 have been ignorant of letters and the use of iron. 

 But as Higgins observes, this may have been 

 owing to their separation from the primitive tribes 

 of the old world, before they had advanced be- 

 yond the savage or pastoral state. And he thinks 

 that, as the horse was unknown in America pre- 

 vious to the time of its discovery by Columbus, 

 the pictorial representations of that animal by the 

 Mexicans, prove that their progenitors came ori- 

 ginally from the old world. 



If then it be true, that Africa, New Holland, 

 and the various islands of the Pacific, were peo- 

 pled from Southern Asia, which, as we have seen, 

 was the seat of the Garden of Eden, that ancient 

 Scythia, Northern Asia, the whole of Europe, and 

 the new world, were peopled from the same pro- 

 lific region, there is no foundation in nature for 

 the division of mankind into three, five, or more 

 primitive races. We are therefore authorized to 



