THE HUMAN SPECIES. £63 



signs, can be interpreted by words in several languages, differ- 

 ing in every other respect from each other. Thus, there can- 

 not be a reliance on arguments drawn from the difference of 

 American languages from the Mongolic ; they vary among the 

 distinct families of North America, as much as from any Tah- 

 tar tongue ; and there exist sufficient coincidences and similar- 

 ities in the sounds of words, as well as in the opinions, man- 

 ners and practices of the natives, resembling those of Eastern 

 Asia, when taken with the other arguments already produced, 

 as to overthrow the whole fabric of an exclusively American 

 aboriginal species or form of man, constituting the races of that 

 continent, always excepting the Flathead type, which, it must 

 be owned, constitutes an ingredient very generally diffused 

 through the native tribes, but not their principal portion. 

 Even the most determined advocates of the original unity of the 

 races reject the Esquimaux, who are admitted to be of an 

 Asiatic stock, when they should also reflect, that, in the north- 

 ern portion, several tribes of the present Indians, such as the 

 Iroquois, confess that they dwelt themselves in the high north 

 before they migrated to their present habitation ; while the 

 Tschutski of Eastern Asia are assumed to be of the American 

 stem ; accommodating the conclusion to a reversed order of migra- 

 tion, which, with singular inconsistency, admits the practicabil- 

 ity, on hypothetical grounds, in favor of utter savages, what it 

 refuses to the ancient and middle ages of great and organized 

 nations, who were navigators both on the east and west of the 

 New World, and for times when facilities for that purpose were 

 apparently more at hand than in later ages; for, by strangely re- 

 versing the natural order of human dispersion, another and prob- 

 ably not inconsiderable transition from Asia is disregarded ; one 

 which, being taken in connection with the more immediate 

 facility, by an entire, or almost an entire, communication by 

 land, when Behring's Straits had not yet greatly widened, 

 obviated all serious difficulty. At that period not only Esqui- 

 maux, but Finnic, and the north-eastern Caucasian races, here- 



