ON" THE OEIOIN AND MIGEATIONS OF THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 73 



of the patriarch Jacob and the exodus of the children of Israel 

 from the land. of Egypt. A later date than this would scarcely 

 suffice to account for the dispersion of the Indo -American nations 

 over both continents, originating as they all did, agreeably to the 

 testimony of Baron Humboldt, in one common source, as well as 

 for the multitude of languages that have sprung in the course of 

 long ages from that one source. 



I maintain, further, that the original inhabitants of America, 

 and their more immediate descendants, had brought along with 

 them, from beyond the Pacific, a comparatively advanced form 

 of civilization, which they reproduced in those colossal works 

 of which the wonderful remains in Peru and Mexico have aston- 

 ished the whole civilized world ; but that this higher civilization 

 had, from causes unknown to us, died out long before the era of 

 the Spanish conquest. Dr. Yon Martins, who maintains that the 

 Indo-Americans are indigenous, created on the spot as an inferior 

 edition of the genus man, and having no connection or relation- 

 ship with any other portion of the human family, nevertheless 

 admits the fact of this higher civilization having characterized 

 the earlier ages of Indo-American history. " Colossal works of 

 architecture," he tells us, " comparable in extent to the monu- 

 ments of ancient Egypt (as those of Tiahuanaca on the Lake 

 Titicaca, which the Peruvians, as far back as the time of the 

 Spanish conquest, beheld with wonder as the remains of a much 

 more ancient people), bear witness that their inhabitants had in 

 remote ages developed a moral power and mental cultivation 

 which have now entirely vanished. A mere semblance of them — 

 an attempt to bring back a period which had long passed by — 

 seems perceptible in the kingdom and institutions of the Incas." 



It would appear, therefore, that long ages, perhaps, before the 

 era of the Spanish conquest, a blight had fallen on the earlier and 

 higher civilization of the Indo-Americans, and that it had, in a 

 great measure, died out, as it would seem to have done com- 

 pletely all over the Pacific. But if we only take into consider- 

 tion the remarkably peculiar circumstances in which the Indo- 

 American nations were placed, as compared with the nations of the 

 West, we shall not be surprised at this seemingly mysterious 

 consummation. What other division of the human race would, in 

 similar circumstances have attained a higher level than the Indo- 

 Americans appear to have reached? Had Europe, for instance, 

 been inhabited exclusively either by the Celtic or the Teutonic 

 race for the last three thousand years — had that race been shut 

 out from all communication with the rest of mankind — had they 

 been equally ignorant of letters and of the use of iron — and had 

 their only domestic animals been the dog, the turkey, the llama, 

 and the duck, with no sheep or cattle or horses, or swine, and had 

 their only species of grain been maize or Indian corn — I question 



