1 14 MEMOIRS OF 



north-east, viz. the Russian, tlie Polish, the 

 Bohemian, and the Vendean. It is this great 

 and respectable brancli of the Caucasian race 

 which has carried philosophy, science, and art 

 to their greatest perfection, and of which it has 

 been the depositary for thirty centuries. The 

 inhabitants of the north, such as the Samoyedes, 

 the Laplanders, and the Esquimaux, come, ac- 

 cording to some, from the Mongolian race, and 

 according to others they are the degenerated off- 

 spring of the Scythian and Tartaric branch of the 

 Caucasian. The Americans cannot be clearly 

 brought back to either of our races of the Old 

 World ; and yet, nevertheless, they do not 

 possess a sufficiently precise and constant cha- 

 racter to form a peculiar race. Their copper 

 complexion is far from being enough ; their black 

 hair and their beard would approach them to 

 the Mongolian, if their marked features, their 

 nose, equally projecting with our own, their 

 large and open eyes, did not oppose this idea, 

 and assimilate them to our European forms. 

 Their languages are as innumerable as their 

 nations ; and no one has as yet been able to 

 seize on demonstrative analogies between them- 

 selves, or between them and the inhabitants of 

 the ancient Continent." 



