Aboriginal Race of America. 129 



Cabrera has endeavoured to shew, their native seats were in Chiapas 

 and Guatimala, we may not stop to inquire ; but to them, and to 

 them alone, we trace the monolithic gateways of Peru, the sculptures 

 of Bogota, the ruined temples and pyramids of Mexico, and the 

 mounds and fortifications of the valley of the Mississippi. 



Such was the Toltecan Family ; and it will now be inquired how 

 it happens that so great a disparity should have existed in the intel- 

 lectual character of the American nations, if they are all derived from 

 a common stock, or in other words belong to the same race ? How 

 are we to reconcile the civilization of the one with the barbarism 

 of the other ? It is this question which has so much puzzled 

 the philosophers of the past three centuries, and led them, in the face 

 of facts, to insist on a plurality of races. We grant the seeming 

 anomaly ; but however much it is opposed to general rule, it is not 

 without ample analogies among the people of the old world. No 

 stronger example need be adduced than that which presents itself in 

 the great Arabian family ; for the Saracens who established their 

 kingdom in Spain, whose history is replete with romance and refine- 

 ment, whose colleges were the centres of genius and learning for 

 several centuries, and whose arts and sciences have been blended with 

 those of every subsequent age ; — these very Saracens belong not only 

 to the same race but to the same family with the Bedouins of the 

 desert ; those intractable barbarians who scorn all restraints which 

 are not imposed by their own chief, and whose immemorial laws for- 

 bid them to sow corn, to plant fruit trees or to build houses, in order 

 that nothing may conflict with those roving and predatory habits 

 which have continued unaltered through a period of three thousand 

 years. 



Other examples perhaps not less forcible, might be adduced in the 

 families of the Mongolian race ; but without extending the compari- 

 son, or attempting to investigate this singular intellectual disparity, 

 we shall, for the present, at least, content ourselves with the facts as 

 we find them. It is important, however, to remark, that these ci- 

 vilized states do not stand isolated from their barbarous neighbours ; 

 on the contrary they merge gradually into each other, so that some 

 nations are with difficulty classed with either division, and rather form 

 an intermediate link between the two. Such are the Araucanians, 



