62 ON THE OEiaiN AND MIGRATIONS OF THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 



was in full operation in the Empire of Mexico ; at a time when a 

 public highway was either a relic of Roman greatness or a sort 

 of nonentity in England, there were roads of 1,500 miles 

 in length in the Empire of Peru. The feudal system was 

 as firmly established in these transatlantic kingdoms as in Erance, 

 and the system of etiquette that regulated the intercourse of the 

 different ranks of society, was as complete and as much respected 

 as in the Court of Philip the Second. The Peruvians were 

 ignorant of the art of forming an arch, but they had constructed 

 suspension bridges across frightful ravines ; they had no imple- 

 ments of iron ; but their forefathers could move blocks of stone as 

 huge as the Sphinxes and the Memnons of Egypt. The Mexicans 

 were unacquainted with the art of forming cast metal pipes, but 

 they had constructed dykes or causeways as compact as those of 

 Holland ; and their capital, which was situated in the centre of a 

 salt water lake, was supplied with a copious stream of fresh water, 

 brought from beyond the lake in an aqueduct of baked clay. 

 They had had no Cadmus to give them an alphabet, but their pic- 

 ture writing enabled them to preserve the memory of past events 

 and to transmit it to posterity. 



" The Indigenous race of the New World," observes Dr. Yon 

 Martins, an eminent Bavarian philosopher, who travelled in the 

 Brazils during the earlier portion of the present century, " is 

 distinguished from all the other nations of the earth, externally 

 by peculiarities of make, but still more internally by their state 

 of mind and intellect. The aboriginal American is at once in 

 the incapacity of infancy and unpliancy of old age ; he unites the 

 opposite poles of intellectual life." And again, "The first 

 germs of development of the human race in America can be 

 sought nowhere except in that quarter of the globe.* In short, 

 Humboldt, Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia, and Dr. Yon Martins, 

 all give it as their deliberate opinion that the aborigines of 

 America are all, with the exception of the Esquimaux of the 

 Polar circle, one people, and unlike every other people on the 

 face of the earth. But while both Humboldt and Dr. Morton 

 modestly decline pronouncing any judgment as to their origin, 

 Dr. Yon Martins, in the true spirit of modern scepticism, tells 

 us at once that they had sprung into existence on the spot. 



To return now to Mr. Bancroft, although that writer lays 

 down no theory of his own as to the original peopling of 

 America, he evidently inclines to the opinion of those who derive 

 the Indo-Americans from Eastern Asia by Behring's Straits. 

 " The theory that America was peopled," says Mr, Bancroft, " or 

 at least, partly peopled, from Eastern Asia, is certainly more 

 widely advocated than any other, and in my opinion is moreover 



* Von dem Eechtzustande unter der Ureinwohnern Braziliens. A paper 

 bv Dr. Von Martius, in the Royal Geographical Society's Journal, vol. ii. 



