THE HUMAN SPECIES. 2G1 



Aleu an Islands, and southward, to the Columbia and Cali- 

 fornia. Here, also, the facilities for this purpose were mostly 

 furnished by nature, and the propelling cause, when landed, is 

 likewise detected, by the country supplying little food between 

 the Rocky Mountains and the sea. The Northern Pacific was 

 navigated by Japanese tribes in ancient times, and is so even 

 now, although, since the appearance of European navigators, 

 the trade has been discontinued, if not absolutely forbidden ; 

 yet, within these few years, a British vessel boarded a Japa- 

 nese junk within two days' sail of the California coast, and 

 found that it had drifted, without human care, for many 

 months, and that, of forty of the ship's company, only seven 

 persons survived. This vessel, having lost its course, was car- 

 ried by the prevailing winds and currents of that portion of the 

 Pacific to the eastward, and was in all probability wrecked on 

 the American coast, after the living people had been taken out 

 of her and saved.*' 



Here then, we have likewise, on the east side, instances, not 

 of facilities, but of necessary consequences, of vessels reaching 

 the west coast, so soon as they are placed within the influence 

 of the winds and currents which prevail, either constantly or 

 at certain periods of the year, in the latitudes above indicated ; 

 nor is there a want of proof that canoes, with a proportion 

 of Polynesians, have survived the hardships of four months at 

 sea, nor that they have been found at eight hundred leagues' 

 distance from their homes; for both facts are noticed by our 

 navigators in the tropical Pacific; and by the Aleutians, a con- 

 tinuous chain of islands passing from one quarter of the globe 

 to the other, a route is established, as if they were intended for 

 an easy and speedy method of crossing between them. But 

 though timber for canoes and sea-rafts is abundant, both on the 

 north and south points of departure, there is scarcely any near 



* They were arried to the Sandwich Islands, and thence, by the first 

 opportunity, sej on to their native land. 



