758 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



The reader who does not travel may easily trace on his map the Cordillera range 

 through Grenada, and pointing out at Santa Martha, on the coast of Venezuela, and 

 follow it through the Lesser and Greater Antilles; and he who travels may see with 

 the naked eye, on the northern face of the Silla, at Caracas, the sublime vertical 

 grooves cut when that mighty subsidence went down. 



From those points the chain of the Lesser Antilles, as now seen, is a succession of 

 mountain peaks, some volcanic and others not, continuing the course of the Cor- 

 dillera ; and from chemical and geological tests I have found that they have anciently 

 occupied positions equally elevated as the highest parts of the Andes at the present 

 day. 



In my descent from the tribe of Crows, in the northern ranges of the Rocky Mount- 

 ains (as has been described), through the Toltec tribes, to Mexico, in 1854, and gather- 

 ing their traditions, all pointing to the sunken countries, I was forcibly struck with 

 the importance of these great changes in their probable effects on the distribution of 

 races. 



I contemplated tests by which to determine the extent of those subsidences aud 

 the depths to which they had sunk, and also the partial elevations to which they 

 have again arisen, and with examinations I then made, partly establishing my theory, 

 I visited the Baron do Humboldt, in Berlin, in 1855 * * *. And after having 

 fully explained my theory to him, and the tests which I brought him, when I was 

 about starting on a second voyage to the Lesser Antilles, I received the following 

 complimentary and approving letter from him : 



"To Geo. Catlin, Esq. : 



"My Dear Sir : I have read with profound interest the papers you left with me. 

 I believe, with you, that the Crows are Toltecs ; and I was instantly impressed with 

 this belief when I first saw your portraits of Crow chiefs in London some years since. 

 But I am more struck with your mode of determining the sinking and rising transits of 

 rocks, and the probable dates and extent of cataclysmic disasters. I believe your 

 tests are reliable, and perfectly justify you for making the contemplated voyage to 

 the Lesser Antilles. The subject is one of vast importance to science, and if I were 

 a younger man I would join you in the expedition at once. 



"I believe your discoveries will throw a great deal of light on the important sub- 

 ject of the effect of cataclysms on the distribution of races. 



"I return to you with this the papers you left with me, and I inclose you a memo- 

 randum for your voyage, which may lead you to examinations that you might other- 

 wise overlook. 



" Let nothing stop you ; you are on a noble mission, and the Great Spirit will pro- 

 tect you. 



"Your sincere friend, 



"A. V. HUMBOLDT. 



'• Potsdam, September 12, 1855." 



Armed with this encouraging letter and the invaluable "memorandum" from that 

 great philosopher for my further guidance, I made my second visit to the West In" 

 dies and carried my tests and applied them to the summits of the Ando-Venezuelan 

 mountains on the coast of South America ; and with facts which I then gathered I 

 re-crossed the ocean, and was traversing the continent to lay the results of my re- 

 searches before my noble friend, as he had desired, wken the news of his death met 

 me, but in no way depreciated the important facts with which I was freighted.* 



The migration of the Toltecs and Aztecs from the north and the cataclysmic events 

 so well proved by Indian traditions, and more positively established by the tests I 

 have alluded to, account for the total extinction of a race so numerous, and so far 



* The List fow years of my wanderings have been more amongst rocks than amongst Indians ; and a 

 work which I am preparing, to be entitled " The Lifted and Subsided Rocks of America," will carry 

 this subject much further than space will allow in the compressed remarks of this little work. 



