74 ON THE ORiaiN AND MIGRATIONS OF THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 



wlietlier Europe itself would have vied at this moment with 

 ancient Mexico or Peru. The nations of the West have in all 

 past ages been jumbled together in the great political dice-boxes 

 of Europe and Western Asia, each perpetually changing its rela- 

 tive position to the rest, and entering from absolute necessity 

 into new combinations. Now, just as quartz pebbles lose their 

 angles and acquire a sort of polish by being subjected to the rush- 

 ing of waters in the bed of a rapid river, while they would doubt- 

 less have retained their original conformation and their less 

 pleasing exterior if they had been lying all the while at the bot- 

 tom of a lake — and as malt liquor, when it has become stale, 

 revives and becomes brisk again when emptied from vessel to 

 vessel — it appears to me that the changes of circumstances that 

 have been experienced in all past ages by the Western nations, 

 have been highly favourable to the general progress of civili- 

 zation in the West, and to the general development of the 

 mental energies of man. In short, when we consider the very 

 unfavourable circumstances in which the Indo-American nations 

 had been placed for countless ages, and contrast them with the 

 stately ruins of their palatial and other noble buildings that 

 indicate their past glory, the wonder is not that the Indo- 

 Americans achieved so little, but that they achieved so much. 



At all events, there is evidently a very wide field still open to 

 the Australian literati of the future in tracing the developments 

 of human society in such extraordinary circumstances as present 

 themselves to the contemplative mind in the South Sea Islands, 

 and among the Indo-American nations. 



