114 Origin and Migrations of tlie Polynesian Nation. 



within, and it was considered sufficiently large to contain the 

 whole of the population. There were four principal openings in 

 the wall, at regular distances from each other, that in the west 

 being called the King's Road. They were designed for ingress 

 and egress ; but during a siege were built up with loose stones, 

 wheu it was considered a pari kaabuca, an impregnable fortress"* 



Considering that the normal state of the South Sea Islands 

 has from time immemorial been that of civil or rather internecine 

 war, there is no point of comparison between the Polynesians 

 generally and the Indo- Americans more interesting than that of 

 their fortifications. Those of the Indo-Americans appear to have 

 been generally formed of mounds of earth -a mode of formation 

 well adapted for such localities as the alluvial banks of the Ohio, 

 the dead levels near the lakes of Canada, or the elevated plains 

 of Central America, but not at all adapted for the South Sea 

 Islands. My talented townsman, the late John G-alt, Esq., of 

 Grreenock, in Scotland, the author of a whole series of popular 

 works of fiction about half-a-century ago, and father of the present 

 Premier in Canada, has told me that he had seen the remains of 

 an Indian fort on the summit of a precipitous ridge near Lake 

 Simcoe, in Upper Canada. It consisted of a mound of earth, 

 enclosing a considerable extent of ground ; but on the banks of 

 the Miainis River, much farther to the southward, the Indian 

 forts had been constructed of stone. 



Nay, the march of ancient civilisation among the Indo-Ameri- 

 cans may even be traced, in some measure, by these most inter- 

 esting remains. In South America, I have not heard of their 

 being found to the eastward of the Andes. The gloomy forests 

 of Guiana and the Brazils, were evidently unfavourable for the 

 preservation of Indo- American civilisation; and the portion of 

 the race that wandered into these vast solitudes was necessarily 

 broken up, at an early period, into an affinity of insignificant 

 tribes that could hold little or no communication with each other, 

 and that, consequently, very soon sunk irrevocably beneath the 

 level of the rest of their nation. But the regions of Central 

 America, the elevated plains of Bogota and Cundinamarca, the 

 open valleys of Peru, and the lofty and secluded, but highly 

 fertile, tracts of Chili, were much more favourable for the forma- 

 tion of powerful states and empires ; and it is accordingly, in 

 these portions of the Continent of South America that the ruins 

 of ancient cities and of extensive fortifications are found. In the 

 North American continent, the course of the Mississippi and its 

 tributary streams would, doubtless, guide the Indian in his pro- 

 gress to the northward ; and it is, accordingly, on the banks of 

 the Ohio, in the "Western prairies, and along the lakes of Canada, 

 that we find the monuments of his ancient power. 

 * " Polynesian Researches," vol. i, page_314. 



