Aboriginal Race of America, 145 



at a distance from all civilized men, and the process will advance 

 with almost incredible celerity. For, whether he comes in contact 

 with savages or not, in the dark recesses of the forest, his offspring 

 will speedily arrive at a state of complete barbarism." 



We confess our difficulty in imagining how the Polynesians, 

 themselves a barbarous people, though possessing some of the at- 

 tributes of civilized life, should become savages in the tropical re- 

 gions of America, wherein the climate must be as congenial to their 

 constitutions as their own, and the various other external circum- 

 stances are calculated to foster rather than to depress the energies of 

 a naturally active and intelligent people. But the general prevalence 

 of easterly winds is adverse to the colonization of America from the 

 islands of the Pacific ; for the nearest of these islands is one thousand 

 eight hundred miles from the American coast ; and when we reflect on 

 the many difficulties which the mere distance opposes to navigation 

 in small vessels, and the absolute necessity for food and water for a 

 long period of time, we feel compelled to believe that America has 

 received very feeble if any accessions to its population from the 

 Polynesian islands. Such voyages, if admitted, could only have been 

 accidental ; for it is not to be supposed that these islanders would 

 have attempted remote discoveries on the vast Pacific ocean in the very 

 face of the trade winds ; and a successful issue is among the least 

 probable of human events. 



Even admitting that the Polynesians have accomplished all that 

 the theory requires, how does it happen that on reaching the conti- 

 nent of America, they should all at once have relinquished their 

 intuitive fondness for the water, forgotten the construction of their 

 boats, and become the most timid and helpless navigators in the 

 world ? 



A comparison of languages, moreover, gives no support to the 

 Polynesian hypothesis ; for all the zeal and ingenuity which have 

 been devoted to this inquiry, have tended only to disclose a complete 

 philological disparity. 



The theories to which we have thus briefly adverted, would each 

 derive the whole American population from a single source ; but 

 various others have been hazarded of a much more complex nature, 

 by which the Indian nations are referred to a plurality of races, not 



u 



