130 Distinctive characteristics of the 



whose language and customs, and even whose arts, prove their direct 

 affiliation with the Peruvians, although they far surpass the latter in 

 sagacity and courage, at the same time that their social institutions 

 present many features of intractable barbarism. So also the Aztec 

 rulers of Mexico at the period of the Spanish invasion, exhibit, with 

 their bloody sacrifices and multiform idolatry, a strong contrast to the 

 gentler spirit of the Toltecas, who preceded them, and whose arts 

 and ingenuity they had usurped. Still later in this intermediate 

 series were the Natchez tribes of the Mississippi, who retained some 

 traces of the refinement of their Mexican progenitors, mingled with 

 many of the rudest traits of savage life. It is thus that we can yet 

 trace all the gradations, link by link, which connect these extremes 

 together, showing that although the civilization of these nations 

 is fast becoming obsolete, although their arts and sciences have pass- 

 ed away with a former generation, still the people remain in all other 

 respects unchanged, although a variety of causes has long been 

 urging them onward to deep degradation and rapid extinction. 

 Strange as these intellectual revolutions may seem, we venture to 

 assert that, all circumstances being considered, they are not greater 

 than those which have taken place between the ancient and modern 

 Greeks. If we had not incontestable evidence to prove the fact, who 

 would believe that the ancestors of the Greeks of the present day 

 were the very people who gave glory to the Age of Pericles! 



It may still be insisted that the religion and the arts of the Ameri- 

 can nations point to Asia and Egypt ; but it is obvious, as Humboldt 

 and others have remarked, that these resemblances may have arisen 

 from similar wants and impulses, acting on nations in many respects 

 similarly circumstanced. "It would indeed be not only singular, but 

 wonderful and unaccountable," observes Dr. Caldwell, " if tribes and 

 nations of men, possessed of similar attributes of mind and body, 

 residing in similar climates and situations, influenced by similar 

 states of society, and obliged to support themselves by similar means 

 in similar pursuits, — it would form a problem altogether inexplicable, 

 if nations thus situated did not contract habits and usages, and, 

 instinctively modes of life and action, possessing towards each other 

 many striking resemblances." Here also we may draw an illustration 

 from the old world ; for notwithstanding the comparative proximity 



