272 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



perhaps better settlements; but, from their new position, event- 

 ually forsaking all acquaintance with navigation. 



Thus are shown those successive proceedings of nations in 

 the New World, which were counterparts of the well-known 

 invasions of the northern tribes in the Old ; both radiating 

 from a common centre; surmounting obstacles of seas, deserts, 

 swamps, forests, and mountain-chains ; surviving mutual 

 slaughters, victories and defeats, till they reach the utmost 

 limits of the habitable earth. If now we inquire whether the 

 nations of America attest, in their structure, the various origin 

 here shown, or have a uniformity of characteristics, which 

 many eminent physiologists, together with Dr. Morton, contend 

 for, we shall find great evidence of a common type very gen- 

 erally, but not unexceptionably, pervading the nations in ques- 

 tion. It is found chiefly in the great vertical prolongation of 

 the frontal bone, though this distinction, we have before 

 noticed, is not exclusively American : it varies in size, probably, 

 according to the degree of intermixture different tribes have 

 received — there being, besides, populations on the coasts of 

 the sea of Okotsk, and even on Saghalin Island, similarly dis- 

 tinguished.* Many Japanese, particularly Bonzes of the lower 

 classes of the nation, have the forehead remarkably depressed. 

 In several portions of the New Continent, the oblique eyes, 

 complexion, and other characters of Mongols occur, as among 

 the Alikhoolis of Terra del Fuego ; but the Chilenos have 

 strikingly Hindoo features. 



* It is externally apparent, in some abnormal tribes of the Polynesian 

 islands, and exclusive of the Flathead Paltas, most conspicuous in peak- 

 headed natives of Kotzebue's Sound, on the north-west coast, who, 

 though they do not belong to the Esquimaux stem, are more like natives 

 of the east coast of Asia; and if these are claimed as a portion of the 

 Tschutski race, then they would show the last mentioned to be originally 

 not American, but Asiatic, nay Finnic ; and, consequently, that the cra- 

 nial conformation in question is not peculiar to the New World ; but an 

 excessive divergence arising in an abnormal stem, where the sutures close 

 more slowly than in the typical stocks. 



