xviii Introduction. 



and even at that of inundations, fighting for the possession of pastures 5 

 subjugating one another mutually 5 and, united by the common tie ot 

 manners, language, and worship, they would have risen to that state of 

 semi-civiHzation which we observe with surprise in the nations of the 

 Mono-ol and Tartar race. America would then, like the centre of Asia, 

 have had its conquerors, who, ascending from the plains to the table- 

 lands of the Cordilleras, and abandoning a wandering life, would have 

 subdued the civilized nations of Peru and New Granada, overturned 

 the throne of the Incas and of the Zaque (the secular chief of Cun- 

 dinamarca), and substituted for the despotism which is the fruit of 

 theocracy, that despotism which arises from the patriarchal government 

 of a pastoral people. In the New World the human race has not ex- 

 perienced tliese great moral and political changes, because the Steppes, 

 thouo-h more fertile than those of Asia, have remained without herds ; 

 because none of the animals that furnish milk in abundance are natives 

 of the plains of South America 3 and because, in the progressive un- 

 folding of American civilization, the intermediate link is wanting that 

 connects the hunting with the agricultural nations.' 



The primitive herdsman or agriculturist would soon discover that 

 the domestication of animals sometimes entailed great sacrifices. While 

 watching his stars and his gods for favourable omens, diseases un- 

 known to him when the creatures were in a wild state, would ap- 

 pear ; and from their unusual character, the suddenness of their attack, 

 and the great mortality attending them, would strike him with fear 

 and amazement. In his sombre and crude belief in the agency of 

 good and evil spirits, and in his ignorance of the influence of physical 

 phenomena on health, he would only see in these visitations the opera- 

 tion of malignant divinities. All barbarous and ignorant nations have 

 ever substituted for the simple and universal laws of nature, which are 

 unknown to them, the operation of spirits, genii, and strange gods. 

 And when the benignant spirits have been made subordinate to those 

 of a malevolent character, and his cattle decline and die, the half civil- 

 ized man betakes himself to prayers, sacrifices, imprecations, and other 

 rites to avert the loss and assuage his fears. At a more advanced stage 

 he has recourse to magic to obtain a curej the animal and vegetable, 

 more rarely the mineral, kingdoms are ransacked j sorcery, enchantments, 

 incantations, and other unreasonable and unhallowed rituals are devised 

 to appease the wrath of the invisible destroyer ; and while the potion is 

 being prepared or administered, the mystic formula is uttered in a weird 

 imploring voice to the offended spirit. 



Among all people this has been the commencement of what we 



