Aboriginal Race of America. 147 



such numerous and gigantic remains of human ingenuity and effort, 

 at the same time that no trace of this exotic family can be detected 

 in the existing Indian population. They and their arts are equally 

 eradicated ; and we can only conceive of the presence of these migra- 

 tory strangers in small and isolated groups, which might have mo- 

 dified the arts of an antecedent civilization, while they themselves 

 were too few in number to transmit their lineaments to any abori- 

 ginal community. 



Closely allied to this theory, is that of our ingenious countryman, 

 Mr. Delafield, who derives the demi- civilized nations of America 

 from " the Cuthites who built the monuments of Egypt and In- 

 dostan." He supposes them to have traversed all Asia to reach 

 Behring's Strait, and thus to have entered America at its northwest 

 angle, whence they made their way by slow journeys to the central 

 regions of the continent. Our objections to this theory will be 

 found in what has been already stated ; and we may merely add, that 

 the route by which the author conducts his pilgrim adventurers, 

 appears to constitute the least plausible portion of his theory. Mr. 

 Delafield supposes the barbarous tribes to be of a different stock, 

 and refers them to the Mongolians of Asia ; thus adopting the idea 

 of a plurality of races. 



We shall lastly notice an imaginative classification which separates 

 the aborigines of America into four species of men, exclusive of the 

 Eskimaux. This curious but unphilosophical hypothesis has been 

 advanced by Bory de St. Vincent, a French naturalist of distinction, 

 who considers the civilized nations to be cognate with the Malays, 

 and designates them by the collective name of the Neptunian species; 

 while to his three remaining species, — the Columbian, the American 

 and the Patagonian, he assigns certain vague geographical limits, 

 without establishing any distinctive characteristics of the people 

 themselves. The system is so devoid of foundation in nature, so 

 fanciful in all its details, as hardly to merit a serious analysis ; and 

 we have introduced it on the present occasion to illustrate the ex- 

 travagance and the poverty of some of the hypotheses which have 

 been resorted to in explanation of the problem before us. 



Once for all I repeat my conviction, that the study of physical 

 conformation alone, excludes every branch of the Caucasian race 



