128 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



mation. What other division of the human race would, in similar 

 circumstances, have attained a higher level than the Indo- 

 Americans appear to have reached ? Had Europe, for instance, 

 been inhabited exclusively either by the Celtic or the Teutonic 

 race for the last three thousand years ; had that race been shut 

 out from all communication with the rest of mankind ; had they 

 been equally ignorant of letters and of the use of iron ; and had 

 their only domestic animals been the dog, the turkey, the llama, 

 and the duck, with no sheep, or cattle, or horses, or swine, and 

 had their only species of grain been maize, or Indian corn, I 

 question whether Europe itself would have vied at this moment 

 with ancient Mexico or Peru. The nations of the West have in 

 all past ages been jumbled together in the great political dice- 

 boxes of Europe and Western Asia, each pepetually changing its 

 relative position to the rest, and entering from absolute necessity 

 into new combinations. Now, just as quartz pebbles lose their 

 angles, and acquire a sort of polish by being subjected to the 

 rushing of waters in the bed of a rapid river, while they would 

 doubtless have retained their original conformation, and their less 

 pleasing exterior, if they had been lying all the while at the 

 bottom of a lake ; and as malt liquor, when it has become stale, 

 revives and becomes brisk again when emptied from vessel to 

 vessel, it appears to me that the changes of circumstances that 

 have been experienced in all past ages by the Western nations, 

 have been highly favourable to the general progress of civilisation 

 in the West, and to the general development of the mental 

 energies of man. In short, when we consider the very unfavour- 

 able circumstances in which they had been placed for countless 

 ages, and contrast them with the stately ruins of their palatial 

 and other noble buildings that indicate their past glory, the 

 wonder is not that the Indo-Americans achieved so Httle, but 

 that they achieved so much. 



At all events there is evidently a very wide field still open to 

 the Australian literati of the future in tracing the developments 

 of human society in such extraordinary circumstances as present 

 themselves to the contemplative mind in the South Sea Islands, 

 and among the Indo- American nations. 



I have only a single remark to make before I conclude. In 

 the year 1834, I published a work of 250 pages, in London, on 

 the subjects treated of in this lecture. It was very favourably 

 noticed and reviewed at the time in the Royal Geographical 

 Society's Journal of the period. But another literary man, who 

 had previously written a work on the South Sea Islands, in which 

 he had adopted and maintained De Zuniga's hypothesis, was satis- 

 fied, after reading my book, that that hypothesis was altogether 

 unfounded and untenable, and that I was right in the views and 

 arguments I had put forward on the subject. For, in another 



