THE HUMAN SPECIES. 243 



rous winter seasons, must have gradually induced them 

 to seek milder latitudes, where more plentiful means of 

 subsistence were accessible, in the same manner as the 

 nations of Northern Asia and Europe, have and ever 

 will continue to do when they have a chance of success. 

 It is perhaps here that we must look for the sources 

 of those multiplied evidences of Asiatic origin, shown 

 by most, if not all the American tribes ; both those of 

 the Mongolic or of the beardless stock, and of the true 

 Caucasian ; for when the former of these had journeyed 

 almost entirely southward, tribes of the latter appear 

 to have occupied their abandoned localities, and in a 

 pure condition, or blended with such as remained be- 

 hind, to have passed on across the isthmus, or the 

 straits, to the American shore, whither they, in their 

 turn, were followed by the Esquimaux or Skrelings, 

 who, it is evident, came last, since their descendants 

 have never been able to penetrate more to the south 

 than to the shores of Nootka. 



All these occurrences coincide with the known pro- 

 gress of the Caucasian nations to Western Asia and to 

 Europe. They account for the presence of similar in- 

 scriptions in Siberia and in America, and for many of 

 the facts of the peopling of the new continent at a later 

 period than the west of the Old World ; they admit, 

 without violence, the usual immigrations of distressed 

 marine wanderers, whether they were of Malay or of 

 Phoenician origin ; and even of African as well as 

 Oriental Negroes ; such as the colony of the former, 

 found at Cariquel, near the isthmus of Darien, or the 



