ly the aboriginal people of North America, the reflecting, moral, and religious organs are comparatively small, and the animal and semi-animal ones proportionably large. And the experience of more than two centuries has abundantly evinced, that that "family," as a body, can be neither civilized nor actually conquered and enslaved; but that their ultimate extinction is an event which is approaching, and whose accomplishment nothing earthly can prevent. This is true of the entire family, on account of the general similarity of their organization, the animal and semi-animal portions of their brains being preponderant. But in some branches of the family this is more signally the case than in others. And their propensities and characters correspond, with great exactness, to their cerebral developments. Thus the animality and semi-animality of the Charibs are immense, while their moral, religious, and reflecting organs are correspondingly small. And they are, beyond all other tribes, wild and indomitable, ferocious and sanguinary. Fierce, warlike and unyielding, rather than submit to conquest and slavery, or to any form of civil restraint, they covet extermination, which is nearly accomplished. Of the Huron tribe, whose cerebral developments are in no small degree analogous, the same may be said. They have refused to yield, have fought desperately, and practised every form of cruelty, and are nearly extinct. With an organization and development of brain, and a condition of mind not dissimilar, the Seminoles are pursuing at present a course of warfare, which, if not abandoned, must lead in the end to a like result.

Possessed of brains, as appears from their skulls, more liberally supplied with moral, religious, and intellectual organs, the Creeks, Choctaws, and Cherokees, though brave, warlike, and proverbially artful, have shown themselves less inexorably

cruel, and less brutally devoted to havoc and blood. They are even reported by a few persons, and believed by many, to exhibit faint glimmerings of an approach to civilization. This however is but groundless rumor. Even of the Cherokees, believed to be the more cultivated of the three tribes, this may be affirmed. The "full-bloods" among them are degraded savages. It is the "half-bloods" alone, and other mixtures, more or less approaching full Caucasianism (and their number is small) that exhibit any positive traits of civilization and improvement. The chieftain Ross was almost white; Opotheoholo had also much Caucasian blood in him; and the inventor of the celebrated Cherokee alphabet was the son of a Scotchman. And the cerebral developments of the two first named of these, whom we saw in Washington, corresponded sufficiently with their talents and characters. Nor indeed can the Scotch-Cherokee be correctly pronounced the inventor of the alphabet in question. He was only the fortunate receiver, from a Caucasian of a plain and practical suggestion, of which the alphabet was ultimately the product. The stories so widely and zealously circulated, proclaiming the Cherokees an industrious, civilized, agricultural people, are rank fabrications, designed no doubt for selfish and party purposes. Considered as a tribe or nation, nineteen out of twenty of them, and perhaps even a larger proportion, are indolent, degraded, and miserable savages. And, instead of having property, as they are asserted to have, a majority of them, probably not much less than that just stated, are pennyless wretches, in a much worse condition than Caucasian paupers.

Another tribe well worthy of being noticed in this place, on account of the light it sheds on the connexion between

cerebral development, mind, and character, is the Araucanian. That people inhabit one of the Chilian provinces, toward the southern extreme of South America, and in the excellent development of their brain, as well as in their amount of native intellect, improvability, vigor, and general efficiency of character, stand at the head of the American "RACE," the Mexicans and Peruvians, of former times, in some respects excepted.

In size and shape, the skull of the Araucanian makes a nearer approach to the skull of the Caucasian, than that of any other variety of the aborigines of America. And so does the individual himself in quickness, strength, and compass of mind, and in the energy, firmness, and efficiency of his action, whether he be engaged in hunting or war, or in any other less exciting and perilous pursuit. In the organs especially of Self-esteem, Firmness, Conscientiousness, Combativeness and Love of Approbation, his developments are large. Hence his lofty pride and spirit of independence, with his devotedness to a life of liberty, and his resolution to maintain those priviliges at every hazard and every cost, have never yielded under any form of adversity, or degree of suffering. For perhaps a century and a half his unconquerable daring, and determination to be free have led him to sustain a ceaseless war with the Spaniards on his borders; and his resources of intellect, but little inferior to those of his foe, and disciplined into skill by trial and experience, have enabled him to do so with uniform success. Still however do his boundless

pride, and his reckless and ungovernable aversion from the slightest check on his licentious freedom, coupled with a deficiency of reflectiveness and moral feeling, prevent him from submitting to the mild and salutary restraint of civilization. With all his qualifications therefore for a different state of

life, he is still a savage. And he is so, as the result of his cerebral development, which renders him intolerant of the control of law, and makes him resolve, like Christian, in Byron's "Island," "to live and die, the fearless and the free. " When attentively studied and thoroughly understood in their nature and relations, the whole case and condition of the Mexicans and Peruvians, ancient and modern (for they have their ancient and modern epochs as distinctly marked, and contrasted in as broad and bold relief, as the Europeans and Asiatics)-the case and condition of these nations, when fully and correctly comprehended, present one of the most extraordinary spectacles in the history of man. And, as a moral problem, its solution is as difficult, not to say impracticable, as its aspect as a phenomenon is singular and interesting. Though reiterated attempts to that effect have been made by philosophers the most distinguished for their general knowledge and powers of research, no approach that can be called even seemingly successful, has yet been made toward causes competent to the disentanglement of the knot. True; efforts have been tried to dissever it by the sword-not of reason and science, but of fancy and conjecture; and the blows have but rebounded on the feeble pretenders and aspirants who unskilfully dealt them.

Somewhat more we believe than three centuries ago, Mexico and Peru were found by two bands of European rovers, in the singular, not to call it the marvellous condition to which we have referred. They were two populous and apparently powerful empires, under the restraint of discipline and law, and not a little advanced in civilization, wealth and science, luxury and the arts. Yet they had but little, if any, intercourse with one another, and none with any other civilized people, and were situated like two vast islands in a track

less and unexplored ocean, or two mighty oases in the midst of a boundless desert of ignorance and savagism, degradation and poverty. Nor could there be discovered, we repeat, by the ablest scheme of research that could be instituted, any adequate causes of the immense difference, in matters of mind between them and the various nations around them. In most respects the phenomenon was unique-no parallel to it then existing, or having previously existed, within the purview of history.

Greece, received much of her civilization, science, and arts from Egypt; Rome from Greece; and other parts of Europe from the Italian repositories of intellect and science, literature and taste. But for Egypt no extraneous source of instruction has yet been found-nor perhaps even fancied. Like an electron per se, she seems to have been to herself, from her own native endowments, the source of her own preeminence and grandeur.

Of Mexico and Peru the same may be affirmed. They stood alone, instructed without instructors, civilized without the influence of examples to that effect, and splendid and mighty from the working of causes inherent in themselves. Like Egypt therefore they seem to have been originals; not imitators, copyists, or dependents on others instead of themselves.

Such were some of the peculiarities of the Mexicans and Peruvians. But not the whole of them-nor even perhaps the most striking and unexpected. Though constituting great and independent nations, they were no warriors, and became the victims and slaves of a mere handful of freebooters, visiting them from a distant portion of the globe. At the head of less than two hundred Spaniards, Pizarro overthrew and reduced to the most servile condition the empire of Peru, with a popu