96 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



Others entire. It had more the character of a structure 

 than any we had ever seen, ascribed to the aborigines 

 of America, and formed part of the wall of Copan, an 

 ancient city, on whose history books throw but little 

 light. 



I am entering abruptly upon new ground. Volumes 

 without number have been written to account for the 

 first peopling of America. By some the inhabitants of 

 this continent have been regarded as a separate race, 

 not descended from the same common father with the 

 rest of mankind ; others have ascribed their origin 

 to some remnant of the antediluvian inhabitants of the 

 earth, who survived the deluge which swept away the 

 greatest part of the human species in the days of Noah, 

 and hence have considered them the most ancient race 

 of people on the earth. Under the broad range allow- 

 ed by a descent from the sons of Noah, the Jews, the 

 Canaanites, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the 

 Greeks, the Scythians in ancient times ; the Chinese, 

 the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Welsh, and the Span- 

 iards in modern, have had ascribed to them the honour 



