LETTER XXV. 
WHENCE CAME THE ANCIENT POPULATION ? WHO BUILT THE ANCIENT CITIES ? 
WHO WORSHIPPED THE IDOLS ? 
After this somewhat extended inspection of the Monuments of Mexi- 
can antiquity, the question naturally proposes itself to our minds : — Who 
were the builders of these temples, the worshippers of the idols, and 
whence did they come ? Separated now by wide and lonely seas from the 
Continents of the Old World, was there once a period when the lands were 
united, and the same race spread over both ? Or, are we to doubt the 
traditional and written histories of ages, and believe that an original race 
peopled the American wilds, and built and worshipped after the prompt- 
ings of their own spirits ? 
These are questions that have puzzled and must conimue to puzzle the 
antiquarians of both hemispheres. They cannot be solved. The tradi- 
tions — the habits — the languages — the edifices — of all tribes, races, and 
nations, have been studied and contrasted without result. Separate theo- 
ries have been earnestly and ingeniously advanced. First, that the 
inhabitants came by the north and through Behring's Straits. Second, 
that they came by the islands of the Pacific, or that in times long past, 
the Pacific was not all sea, but partly filled, perhaps, with a vast Conti- 
nent — and Third, that they may have arrived from the Old World by the 
Atlantic. There are long periods of unwritten and even untraditional 
history of the world, and learned and pious geologists seem now to be 
agreed in believing that when it is declared : " In the beginning God cre- 
ated the heaven and the earth," it is not affirmed that God created the 
heaven and the earth on the first day, but that "this ' beginning' may have 
been an epoch, at an unmeasured distance, followed by periods of unde- 
fined duration, during which all the physical operations disclosed by geol- 
ogy were going on."* 
This is certainly satisfactory as to the formation of the earth — a 
mere fulcrum for the development and powers of a future human race. 
But, must not the Bible be considered a full historical account of "all 
the operations of the Creator in times and places with which that human 
*BuckIand, vol. i, p.26. 
