Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10. 123 



short, an indigenous civilization ? or was it borrowed, in 

 some degree, from the nations of the Eastern world? If 

 indigenous, how are we to explain the singular coincidence 

 with the East in institutions and opinions? If Oriental, 

 how shall we account for the great dissimilarity in 

 language, and for the ignorance of some of the most 

 simple and useful arts, which, once known, it would seem 

 scarcely possible should have been forgotten ? This is 

 the riddle of the Sphinx, which no GEdipus has yet had 

 the ingenuity to solve." 



In the light of the facts brought together in the 

 present memoir, it requires no CEdipus to answer the 

 riddle. For the only two objections which Prescott raises 

 in opposition to the great mass of evidence he cites in 

 favour of the derivation of American civilization from the 

 Old World can easily be disposed of. Rivers has com- 

 pletely disposed of one by his demonstration of the fact 

 that people — moreover those on the direct route across 

 the Pacific to America — do actually "forget simple and 

 useful arts" (65) The other objection is equally easily 

 disposed of, when it is remembered that it requires only 

 a few people of higher culture to leaven a large mass 

 of lower culture with the elements of a higher civilization 

 (see also on this point, Rivers, 68). Moreover, if language 

 is made a test, the affinities of the various American 

 tribes one with the other would have to be denied. Thus, 

 the language difficulty cuts both ways. But when we 

 have disposed of his objections, the whole of his 

 admirable summary then becomes valid as an argument 

 in favour of the derivation of American culture from 

 Asia across the Pacific. 



Since then it has become the fashion on the part of 

 most ethnologists either contemptuously to put aside the 

 probability or even the possibility of the derivation of 



