1 42 Distinctive characteristics of the 



vided, to have dreamt of conquest in a country which has had a 

 population of millions from immemorial time. 



There is a third view of this question which remains to be noticed ; 

 for, allowing that the Eskimaux and the cognate Polar nations are not 

 the progenitors of the American race ; and admitting also that the 

 Mongols of central Asia could never have arrived in any requisite 

 number by a direct voyage from one continent to the other, yet it is 

 supposed by many learned men that these Mongols could have 

 reached America by slow journeys from their own distant country ; 

 and that their hieroglyphic charts delineate many of the incidents of 

 their journey : but there is no positive evidence in regard to direc- 

 tion and localities, although these, by a very general consent, are 

 placed in the north and north-west. Cabrera, on the contrary, after 

 the most patient research, aided by unusual facilities for investiga- 

 tion, traces the primal seat of the civilized nations of America to 

 southern Mexico, where the ruined cities of Copan, Uxmal and 

 Palenque, point to an epoch seemingly much more remote than any 

 antiquities contained in the present metropolis of that country. 



If we conventionally adopt the more prevalent opinion, and trace 

 the Aztecs back to California or the strait, we have after all but a 

 vague tradition of a handful of persons, who, for all we know to the 

 contrary, may have been as indigenous to America as any people in 

 it. The aborigines of this continent have always been of nomadic 

 and migratory habits ; a fact which is amply illustrated in the tradi- 

 tional history of Mexico itself. So also with the barbarous tribes ; 

 for the Lenape, the Florida Indians, the Iroquois, the insular Charibs 

 and many others, were intruding nations, who, driven by want, or 

 impelled by an innate and restless activity, had deserted their own 

 possessions to seize upon others which did not belong to them. 

 These nations, like their more polished neighbors, were in the con- 

 stant practice of recording the events of their battles and hunting 

 excursions by hieroglyphic symbols, made, according to circumstances, 

 on trees, skins or rocks; and this rude but expressive language of 

 signs, has been justly regarded as the origin of the picture-writing of 

 the Mexicans. " The difference between them," observes Dr. Coates, 

 " does not appear greater than must necessarily exist between igno- 



