ETHNOLOGY OF THE PRESENT DAY. 249 



try. Hosts of animals enliven tfiese regions ; and the wealth in precious 

 metals and stones is prodigious. In Russian America, the animal and 

 vegetable worlds correspond with those in Siberia. The plants in the 

 plains of Brazil, Guiana, and North America differ in their nature from 

 those of the table lands of Peru and Mexico, and from those found in 

 Patagonia and British North America ; and, as a matter of course, the 

 nearer the productions are to the tropics, the more massive and varied 

 they appear. 



The natives of America may be separated into two classes. The one 

 embraces the Esquimaux of Greenland, Labrador, and Hudson's Bay, and 

 the inhabitants of Behring's Strait, of Alaska, and Prince William's Sound. 

 They are smaller than the rest of the Americans, lively and loquacious, 

 and belong to the Mongolian race. The second class is spread from 

 the northern sections to the southernmost point of America. They are 

 larger, copper colored or of a lighter complexion, warlike, and taciturn. 

 They form the American race. They have at present either adopted the 

 white man's habits, or live as nomads and hunters. The former have fixed 

 dwelling-places, and follow the industrial arts, agriculture, mining, and the 

 rearing of cattle ; the latter are hunters and herdsmen upon the wide 

 prairies (llanos, pampas), and in the boundless primeval forests, or fisher- 

 men when dwelling on the seacoasts, the lakes, and rivers. A rude system 

 of agriculture and a few handicrafts, are practised by those having regu- 

 lated governments, but amongst no others. The tribes still free have 

 republican patriarchal constitutions, the bravest and strongest individual in 

 most cases being ruler. In consequence of the advantages derived from 

 horses, some have become genuine robbers ; others, possessing the largest 

 herds of cattle to be found upon the face of the earth, have been trans- 

 formed into confirmed nomads. Owing to the immigration of Europeans, 

 the greater part of America has become a new Europe ; for in no other 

 division of the world have they exerted so deep a moral and political 

 influence as here. European civilization advanced from the coast towards 

 the interior of the country, and carried along with it the languages, reli- 

 gions, laws, customs, sciences, and arts, as well as the animals (particularly 

 horses, not known before in America) and plants of Europe. Commercial 

 enterprises and missions are driving back more and more the savage hordes 

 of Indians. European civilization is nowhere displayed in a more suc- 

 cessful and stronger manner than in the United States, which exhibit a 

 popular life, a national vigor, and a cultivation, that vie with those of the 

 first powers of Europe. But if we reverse the picture, and contemplate 

 the enslavement of the negro race, we must acknowledge that in that at 

 least they are inconsistent with the doctrines of freedom. Commerce and 

 navigation extending over the whole world, have taken up their chief 

 abode in America. America receives the productions of European 

 industry, and giv^es for them the products of her soil. 



We commence the characteristics of the nations of America with those 

 of the people of Mongolian lineage. 



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