84 VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



In assigning the geographical limits of the Toltecan family, it is not to he 

 supposed that they alone inhabited this extended region; for while successive 

 nations of that family held dominion over it for thousands of years, other and 

 barbarous tribes were every where dispersed through the country, and, whether 

 of aboriginal or exotic origin, may have at all times constituted a large part of the 

 population. During these periods of power and greatness, an organised feudal 

 system divided the nation into two great classes of nobles and plebeians ; and 

 there appears to have been as much objection to the amalgamation of these classes 

 as ever existed in an aristocratic state of Europe. The advent of the Spaniards 

 destroyed all distinctions by reducing both classes to equal vassalage ; and three 

 centuries of slavery and oppression on the part of the Spaniards, have left few 

 traces of Mexican and Peruvian civilisation, excepting what we glean from their 

 history and antiquities. These nations can no longer be identified in existing 

 communities ; and the mixed and motley people who now bear those names, are 

 as unlike their ancestors in moral and intellectual character, as the degraded Copts 

 of Egypt are unlike their progenitors of the age of Pharaoh. 



As it will be a principal object in the sequel of this work to consider the 

 character of these nations in reference to their cranial remains, we shall in this 

 place merely remark that it is in the intellectual faculties that we discover the 

 great difference between the Toltecan and American families. In the arts and 

 sciences of the former we see the evidences of an advanced civilisation. From 

 the Rio Gila in Calafornia, to the southern extremity of Peru, their architectural 

 remains are every where encountered to surprise the traveller and confound the 

 antiquary: among these are pyramids, temples, grottoes, bas-reliefs and arabesques; 

 while their roads, aqueducts and fortifications, and the sites of their mining 

 operations, sufficiently attest their attainments in the practical arts of life.* 



* It will be observed that this family is identical with the Neptunian species (Homo neptunianus) 

 of M. Bory de St. Vincent. I cannot adopt that designation, because the classification to which it 

 belongs refers these people to the Malay race. That they are not Malays is sufficiently obvious from 

 the diff'erence in their character throughout; at the same time that some analogies between the skulls 

 of the two races will be recognised from the description already given. It must moreover be granted, 

 that there are some resemblances in language which are very interesting ; but while these prove a 

 communication and even protracted intercourse between the Americans and Asiatics, they by no 

 means establish an affiliation of nations. But the most striking discrepancy between the Malays and 

 Americans is seen in the extraordinary nautical habits of the one people, and the utter destitution of 

 all maritime enterprise in the other. 



It is curious to observe that in M. Dumoulin's classification, his eleventh, or American species, 

 which embraces most of the barbarous tribes of South America east of the Andes, is said to possess 



