ASME Ee RL Tac A: 
it, more tumid and more powerful than itfelf: fucceffive and new impulfes con- 
tinually arriving, fhort reft was given to that which fpread over a more eaftern 
tract ; difturbed again and again, it covered frefh regions ; at length, reaching the 
fartheft limits of the Old World, found a new one, with ample fpace to occupy 
unmolefted for ages; till Columbus curfed them by a difcovery, which brought 
again new fins and new deaths to both worlds. 
The inhabitants of the New do not confift of the offspring of a fingle 
nation: different people, at feveral periods, arrived there ; and it is impoffible to 
fay, that any one is now to be found on the original fpot of its colonization. It 
is impoffible, with the lights which we have fo recently received, to admit that 
America could receive its inhabitants (at left the bulk of them) from any other 
place than eaftern 4fa. A few proofs may be added, taken from cuftoms or drefies 
common to the inhabitants of both worlds: fome have been Jong extinct in the 
old, others remain in both in full force. 
The cuftom of fcalping was a barbarifm in ufe with the Scythians, who carried 
about them at all times this favage mark of triumph: they cut a circle round the 
neck, and ftripped off the fkin, as they would that of anox*. A little image, 
found among the Kalmucs, of a Tartarian deity, mounted on a horfe, and fitting on 
a human fkin, with fcalps pendent from the breaft, fully illuftrates the cuftom of 
the Scythian progenitors, as defcribed by the Greeé hiftorian. This ufage, as the 
Europeans know by horrid experience, is continued to this day in America. The 
ferocity of the Scythians to their prifoners extended to the remoteft part of fa. 
The Kamtfchatkans, even at the time of their difcovery by the Ruffians +, put their 
prifoners to death by the moft lingering and excruciating inventions ; a practice in 
full force to this very day among the aboriginal Americans. A race of the Scythians 
were ftyled Anthropophagi t, from their feeding on human flefh. The people of 
Nootka Sound {till make a repaft on their fellow creatures §: but what is more 
wonderful, the favage allies of the Britis army have been known to throw the 
mangled limbs of the French prifoners into the horrible cauldron, and devour them 
with the fame relifh as thofe of a quadruped ||. 
The Scythians were fayed, for a certain time, annually to transform themfelves 
into wolves, and again to refume the human fhapeq. The new-difcovered Ame- 
ricans about Nootka Sound, at this time difguife themfelves in dreffes made of the 
fkins of wolves and other wild beafts, and wear even the heads fitted to their 
* Herodotus, lib. iv.—Compare the account given by the hiftorian with the TZartarian tcuneulus, im 
Dr. PALLAs’s Travels, i. tab. x. a. + Hif. Kamtfchatka, 57. t. Mela, lib. ii. c. 1. 
§ Poyage, tie | Goldems Five Indian Nations, -i. 155. {| Herodotus, lib, iv. 
awn. 
CLXEL 
Customs common 
TO AMERICA AND 
THE 
Asia. 
NORTH OF 
