The Origin of the American Races. 279 



particular, had advanced to a considerable degree, viz., Peru, Central 

 America and Mexico. The dominant races of these countries in early 

 times find a place, therefore, in his list of Hamitic Colonies. Not as a 

 matter of course, please don't understand me as suggesting that ; he 

 follows his usual careful system of verification, and though disclaiming 

 any pretensions to be an Americanist brings together a considerable 

 number of testimonials from those who were so. 



I will not attempt to summarise them, because the study of Ameri- 

 can antiquities has advanced so much of late years that if one is to quote 

 it ought to be from late writers rather than from those whose published 

 works were accessible to Father Brosse when issuing the second edition 

 of " Les Chamites " in 1892. But, so far as my reading has gone, 

 later writers are rather adverse to the Asiatic theory. Thus, in a 

 most interesting collection of papers translated from the German 

 and published under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution 

 Mr. Eduard Seler, undoubtedly an Americanist of the foremost rank, 

 at the conclusion of a long and most elaborate account of the wall 

 paintings of Mitla, the celebrated burial-city of the Zapotec kings and 

 priests, says emphatically : "I believe that these pictures are tangible 

 evidences pointing to the idea we ought to form of the Toltecs " — one 

 of the races particularly referred to by Father Brosse — " whose name 

 has been so often mentioned and so much abused ; for they were neither 

 mere mythical forms dwelling in a fantastic region beyond the clouds, 

 nor the inhabitants of a single small city, least of all an exotic civilised 

 race that spread over the whole American Continent, coming from the 

 primal Asiatic home of man lying somewhere near the biblical para- 

 dise. 11 



Such a pronouncement, coming from an expert of the highest 

 eminence, is a formidable negative to the Asiatic theory in general, 

 and to Father Brosse's version of it, connecting these civilised Ameri- 

 can races with the biblical paradise, in particular. Nevertheless I 

 shall presently submit that neither the one nor the other of the 

 theories pronounced against is conclusively disposed of. In the mean- 

 time, as I have begun dealing with the works of recent Americanists, 

 let me, before leaving that branch of my subject, deal with a matter to 

 which I have already referred by way of anticipation, viz., the most 

 valuable collection of manuscripts purchased by Alexander von Hum- 

 boldt in Mexico, and presented by him to the Royal Library of Berlin in 

 January, 1806. To speak of this collection as an American Rosetta 

 Stone would be going too far ; nevertheless certain similarities may be 

 recognised. Both give a clue to the hieroglyphs of an otherwise unintel- 

 ligible past, largely owing to the fact that they belong to a time when 

 that past had already begun to give place to a new civilisation by which 

 it was destined in a very short time to be almost obliterated. Only a 

 few years separated the dates of their respective discoveries : the 

 Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 by French engineers attached to 

 Napoleon's expedition to Egypt : Humboldt's visit to Mexico was in 



