146 Distinctive characteristics of the 



even excepting the Caucasian. For example, the Peruvians, Muyscas 

 and Mexicans, are by some advocates of this system, supposed to be 

 Malays or Polynesians, and all the savage tribes Mongolians ; whence 

 the civilization of the one and the barbarism of the other. But we 

 insist that the origin of these two great divisions must have been the 

 same, because all their ethnographic characters, not excepting the 

 construction of their numberless languages, go to enforce an identity 

 of race. 



Another doctrine which has had many disciples, (among whom 

 was the late Lord Kingsborough, author of Mexican Antiquities) 

 teaches that the whole American population is descended from the 

 Jews, through the ten lost tribes which were carried away by 

 Salmanazer, King of Assyria. Here again the differences of physi- 

 cal organization should set this question at rest for ever ; but in- 

 dependently of these, can we suppose that people so tenacious as the 

 Jews, of their literature, language, and religion, should not have 

 preserved a solitary unequivocal memorial of either among the mul- 

 titudinous tribes of this continent, if any direct affiliation had ever 

 existed between them ? In short, we coincide in opinion with a 

 facetious author who sums up all the evidence of the case with the 

 conclusion, that " the Jewish theory cannot be true for the simple 

 reason that it is impossible." 



We feel assured that the same objection bears not less strongly 

 on every other hypothesis which deduces any portion of the Ameri- 

 can nations from a Caucasian source. In order to solve the problem 

 of the origin of the monumenta of America, independently of any 

 agency of the aboriginal race, an opinion has been advanced that 

 they are the work of a branch of the great Cyclopean family of the old 

 world, known by the various designations of the Shepherd Kings of 

 Egypt, the Anakim of Syria, the Oscans of Etruria, and the Pelas- 

 gians of Greece. These wandering masons, as they are also called, 

 are supposed to have passed from Asia into America at a very early 

 epoch of history, and to have built those more ancient monuments 

 which are attributed to the Toltecan nation. This view, supported 

 as it is by some striking resemblances, and especially in architectural 

 decoration, leaves various important difficulties entirely unexplained : 

 it necessarily presupposes a great influx of foreigners to account for 



