Aboriginal Race of America. 143 



rant warriors and hunters in a simple form of society, and those of 

 the members of a complicated state, possessed of property, and even, 

 as described by Clavigero, of a species of science and literature." 



This gradation of the ruder into the more perfect art of hierogly- 

 phic writing, not only affords an additional argument for the unity of 

 orgin of the American nations, but also constitutes another proof of the 

 distinctness of their race ; for this picture-writing, even in its most 

 elaborate forms, bears no other than the most general resemblance to 

 any exotic hieroglyphics, nor indeed has a real equivalent been 

 detected between them. We may therefore be permitted to repeat 

 our conviction that the annals of the Mexicans bear no indisputable 

 evidence of immigration from Asia ; but, on the other hand, that 

 they are susceptible of as many different interpretations as there are 

 theories to be supported. 



It is remarked by Dr. Coates, that the Mongolian theory, which 

 we are now considering, is objectionable on account of its vastness. 

 " To derive the population of the whole of the American continent 

 from the north-western angle, requires the supposition of a continued 

 chain of colonies during a long succession of ages, acquiring and 

 using an immense diversity of languages, and pursuing each other 

 along the huge ridge of the great American Andes, from Prince 

 William's Sound in the far north, to the extremity of Terra del 

 Fuego, a distance of one hundred and fifteen degrees of latitude, or 

 of eight thousand miles. This long succession of occurrences is 

 absolutely necessary to the theory ; which is thus liable to the 

 difficulty of requiring two extensive hypotheses at once. Several 

 hundred colonies must be imagined to have issued from the same 

 point, all completely isolated, as their languages abundantly show, 

 unconnected by peaceful intercourse, but urging each other by war 

 and the destruction of the game, throughout a third part of the 

 circumference of the globe. 



" The traces of such a series of human waves would be naturally 

 looked for in a tendency to advance population in the north, from 

 which they emanated, and where the pressure must have been great- 

 est and the colonization of longest duration. Nothing like this is 

 observed ; the population of South America, and of Darien, Guati- 

 mala and Mexico, being much greater in proportion than that of any 



