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Ajia and America, is very fhallow. It deepens from thefe flreights (as the Briti/s 
feas do from thofe of Dover) till foundings are-loft in the Pacific Ocean ; but that 
does not take place but to the fouth of the ifles. Between them and the ftreights 
is an increafe from twelve to fifty-four fathom, except only off St. Thaddeus No/s, 
where there is a channel of greater:depth. From the vulcanic difpofition I am 
led to believe not only that there was a.feparation of the continents at the flreights 
of Bertno, but that the whole fpace, from ‘the ifles to that fmall opening, had once 
been occupied by land; and that the fury of the watery element, actuated by that 
of fire, had, in moft remote times, fubverted and overwhelmed the tract, and left 
the iflands monumental fragments. 
Whether that great event took place before or after the population of America, 
is as impoffible, as it is of little moment, for us to know. We are indebted to 
our navigators for fettling the long difpute about the point from which it 
was effe&ted. They, by their difcoveries, prove, that in one place the dif- 
tance between continent and continent is only thirty-nine miles, not (as 
a celebrated cavilift* would have it) eight hundred leagues. This narrow 
ftreight has alfo in the middle two iflands, which would greatly facilitate 
the migration of the Afatics into the New World, fuppofing that it took 
place in canoes, after the convulfion which rent the two continents afunder. 
Befides, it may be added, that thefe ftreights are, even in the fummer, often filled 
with ice; in winter, often frozen: in either cafe mankind might find an eafy 
paflage ; in the laft, the way was extremely ready for quadrupeds to-crofs, and 
{tock the continent of America. I may fairly call in the machinery of vulcanoes 
to tear away the other means of tranfit farther to the fouth, and bring in to my 
affiftance the former fuppofition of folid land between Kamt/chatka and Oonala/cha, 
inftead of the crefcent of iflands, and which, prior to the great.cataftrophe, would 
have greatly enlarged the.means of migration ; but the cafe is not of that difficulty 
to require the folution. One means of paflage is indifputably eftablifhed. 
But where, from the vaft expanfe of the north-eaftern world, to fix on the firft 
tribes who contributed to people the new continent, now inhabited almoft from 
end to end, is a matter that baffles human reafon. The learned may make bold 
and ingenious conjeétures, but plain good fenfe cannot always accede to them. 
As mankind encreafed in numbers, they naturally protruded one another forward. 
Wars might be another caufe of migrations. I know no reafon why the 4fatic. 
north might not be an officina virorum, as well as the European. The overteeming 
country, to the eaft of the Riphean mountains, muft find it neceflary to difcharge 
its inhabitants : the firft great wave of people was forced forward by the next to 
* The author of Recherches Philofophiques fur les Americains, i, 136, 
itt, 
