OF THE HUMAN llACE. 



649 



I must pause for a moment to explain why I consider these 

 explorers as savages, although they were spoken of before 

 as descendants of Abraham and his countrymen, who were ci- 

 vilized. Let us suppose, for illustration, that a party of men 

 and women left Asia Minor in a civilized state. Before they 

 had wandered far, no writing materials or clothes would have 

 remained (had they even possessed them), and their children 

 would have been taught only to provide for daily wants, food, 

 and perhaps some substitute for clothes, such as skins. Their 

 grand-children would have been in a still worse condition as 

 to information or traces of civilization, and each succeeding 

 generation would have fallen lower in the scale, until they be- 

 came savages in the fullest sense of the word ; from which de- 

 graded condition they would not rise a step by their own exer- 

 tions ; so long as they received no assistance, no glimmerings 

 of intelligence, from others who had branched off from the 

 main trunk at a much later period, and had means of preserv- 

 ing more knowledge. The degree of degradation would de- 

 pend upon climate, disposition, description and quantity of 

 food, recollection of origin and traditions, keeping up old ob- 

 servances, and intercourse with other families, tribes, or nations, 

 among whom more traces of their common origin and descent 

 might have been preserved. Were a dozen men and women 

 now cast away upon unknown land — supposing that not one 

 of the party could read or write— that there was no substance 

 with which they could clothe themselves except the skins of 

 animals — that the climate was variable — that they had neither 

 tools nor arms — that the extent of habitable land admitted of 

 their wandering — that it had no other human inhabitants, and 

 that it should be visited by none for the space of some hundred 

 years after the arrival of this party, — in what state would 

 their descendants be found by the next adventurers who might 

 land on the shores of that country ? 



India, China, Mexico, Peru, regions separated from the cen- 

 tral seat of population, but advanced in civilization at the 

 earliest period of their history with which we are acquainted, 

 preserve traditional accounts of superior men who arrived 



