can usages, which are related by modern writers, are not to be regarded as authentic, inasmuch as they are only interpretations of the sculpture, or drawings in outline, found in Mexico or in other places. It is important to distinguish between positive facts and individual opinions. The latter may be as exact as the former, but it would be absurd so to regard them. When a writer appeals to the testimony of a pyramid, or a piece of sculpture, or any other antiquity,he relies upon an incontestable fact; but when he trusts to the explanation of these figures, or some insulated painting or hieroglyphic, it is no longer demonstration. The moment he introduces interpretation for facts, his ulterior reasoning can conduct only to results more or less probable, unless, indeed, the correctness of the system of interpretation has been proved once for all. But thus far the Mexican Champollion seems not to have appeared, and it is not probable that the antiquities of Guatemala and Cholula will find an interpreter worthy of the same credit. Had Egypt not been conquered by the Romans, it is not probable that the meaning of the hieroglyphics would ever have been divined. History must have furnished the key to the Egyptian writing. Is it probable that the Mexican inscriptions will ever be deciphered? Is any single event in their history known with such certainty, that it might serve to discover the key of the writing, were it found represented upon one of these monuments?

However this may be, it is evident, from the examination of these monuments, that the builders of them must have been acquainted with the eastern part of the ancient continent. Mexican tradition shows, on the other hand, that the half civilization which the Spaniards found in Central America was not spontaneously developed there, but introduced by strangers. On this point the discourse which Montezuma addressed to Cortes, after he had established him in one of his vast palaces, is a document of great value.

"We have long known," said the Indian prince "by the traditions received from our ancestors, that neither myself nor any inhabitant of this country is of a stock which had its origin here; we are strangers who came from a great distance, under the standard of a king, who went back to his own country after the conquest, and remained away from Mexico so long that his subjects had formed a very numerous population at the time of his return to it. This king endeavored to take away his subjects with him, but they would not follow him, and still less receive him for a master. He went away a second time alone, and af

terwards announced to us that one of his descendants would come to subjugate the country. From that part of the east from which you say you came, and from all that you relate of the king who sent you here, we believe that he is our destined sovereign, and this the more firmly, as you add that he had long known of us."

It is known that Montezuma received Cortes in a manner entirely accordant with the language which the Spanish captain has put into his mouth; it is therefore right to give credit to the substance of the discourse. Moreover, there was an analogous tradition at Peru. There two persons, a man and a woman, appeared upon the borders of lake Titicaca, without any one being able to learn whence they came. The man introduced agriculture, the woman taught to spin wool. From them descended the Incas, the twelfth king of which race died immediately preceding the arrival of Pizarro.*

Thus a view of the monuments of Central America gives us a sort of certainty, that the American civilization was introduced from some foreign land. Nearly all travellers agree in considering the east of the ancient continent as the cradle of this culture, upon which Humboldt thus expresses his opinions: "I think I have proved," says this illustrious traveller, "in my views of the Cordilleras, that the inhabitants of the new continent had been connected with eastern Asia, long before the arrival of the Spaniards. My proofs are derived from a comparison of the Mexican calendars with the Japan Tubetan; from pyramids whose sides exactly correspond to the cardinal point, and from the most ancient mythos, relative to the four ages or revolutions of the globe. What has appeared in England upon the remarkable pieces of sculpture found in the ruins of Guatemala, since I published my work, has served only to give greater value to my analogies. I regard it as certain, that there was formerly intercourse between western America and eastern Asia; but thus far, neither the mode of communication, nor the races between which the communications existed, can be determined. A small number of the enlightened caste of priests would be sufficient to have produced great changes in western America."

* We find in de Laet's Nieuwe Wereld, a similar tradition respecting Yucatan, which he gives as follows: "Several Indians worthy of credit, relate that they have heard from their ancestors, that their country (Yucatan) was peopled by a certain nation from the east, that God had separated from other nations by opening to them a way across the seas." - Nieuwe Wereld, p. 174.

Humboldt is evidently far from wishing to explain in what manner our continent received its first inhabitants. In his view, the question of the monuments of the Andes has nothing in common with that of the way in which the Creator chose to people our hemisphere. This last question appears to him entirely inexplicable, judging from a passage in a work that he is now publishing, of which several volumes have appeared. "The question of the first population of America is no more a concern of history, than the question of the origin of plants and animals, and of the distribution of organic germs, is a concern of the natural sciences."

On the other hand, several American and European writers have deduced, from the antiquities of our continent, the elements of ingenious hypotheses, which undertake to explain how America was peopled, and by what route the first inhabitants, or rather the founders of the great monuments, passed over to this continent. Mr. Delafield, whose recent publication has called up the foregoing reflections, is among the number of those writers. But before speaking of the opinion which he maintains in his learned work, we must briefly consider the principal theories which have been formed in regard to this subject.

Three leading notions have been broached upon the origin of the first inhabitants of America. One, which is principally maintained by Mr. Jefferson, regards America as the central point of the human creation; and that from it the population of the earth was extended on every side. The following passage, taken from a work of Mr. Josiah Priest, upon "the discoveries in the west," shows the manner in which the supporters of this theory view the subject: "The celebrated Samuel Mitchill, late of New York, in a letter to Governor De Witt Clinton, says, "I avoid the opportunity which this grand conclusion affords me of stating that America was the cradle of the human race; of tracing its colonies westward over the Pacific ocean, and beyond the sea of Kamschatka, to new settlements; of following the emigrants by land and water, until they reached Europe and Africa. I had no inclination to oppose the current opinions relative to the place of man's creation and dispersion. I thought it was scarcely worth while to inform an European, that in coming to America, he had left the new world behind him, for the purpose of visiting the old.”

This hypothesis seems now to be entirely abandoned. We

* Histoire de la Geographie du Nouveau Monde, vol. ii. p. 68.

shall not dwell upon it longer than is necessary to present a few of the facts upon which it is founded.

"In 1826, in a depth of more than eighty feet under the surface of the ground, was found," says Priest, "on the banks of the Ohio, the stump of a tree, three feet in diameter, and ten feet high, which had been cut down with an axe. The blows of the axe were yet visible. It was nearly of the color and apparent character of coal, but had not the friable and fusible quality of that substance.

"The reflections on this discovery are these: first―That the tree was undoubtedly antediluvian. Second-That the river now called the Ohio, did not exist anterior to the deluge, inasmuch as the remains of the tree were found firmly rooted in its original position, several feet below the bed of that river. Third-That America was peopled before the flood, as appears from the action of the axe in cutting down the tree. Fourth-That the antediluvian Americans were acquainted with the use and properties of iron, as the rust of the axe was on the top of the stump when discovered."*

We leave this passage without commentary. The boldness of the conclusions is too apparent to require to be pointed out. From this specimen, it is easy to judge in what fragile barks these theorists prosecuted their voyages of discovery upon the ocean of conjectures.

Clavigero, who undertakes to give another explanation of the origin of the first inhabitants, maintains, that formerly, the American continent must have been united either with western Africa or with eastern Asia. "The Americans of the south," says he, "are of a character too different from those in the north to be regarded as having a common origin. Their passage to this continent is necessarily connected with that of several animals, which cannot have traversed the frozen zones; nor can it for a moment be admitted, that these animals swam across the ocean, and still less, that those which are ferocious can have been brought in ships by man; the migration of animals can, therefore, he explained only on the supposition of a connexion between the two hemispheres, either on the side of Africa or Asia. The American crocodiles favor the former."

A similar opinion, founded upon different considerations, has been expressed by Calcott, who thus reasons: "From what has been offered, we may conclude, that Africa and America were

once joined, or, at least, separated from each other but by a very narrow gulph; and that some time after the flood, the earth was divided or parted asunder, probably by means of an earthquake, and then this middle land sank beneath the ocean."

Those who incline to support this view of the mode of peopling America, do not rely entirely upon the arguments in favor of their hypothesis, drawn from the manners and monuments of this continent; they find in ancient authors, passages that make mention of a very large island, situated in the great Atlantic Ocean, which island or continent, called Atlantis, must have since disappeared in the depths of the sea. Plato, Diodorus Siculus, Aristotle, and others, speak of this land situated beyond the pillars of Hercules. At the present day, this opinion is rarely adopted. The passages of the ancients relating to this continent, which they call Atlantica, are too fabuJous to be dwelt upon, except in the manner of the German poet Novalis, who concludes an incredible story, which he is relating, as follows: "No body knows what is become of this country; only the traditions inform us, that Atlantis has disappeared forever, submerged by a great inundation."

One of the most eloquent writers of this country, in a recent course of lectures upon the American Antiquities, delivered in this city, developed with great erudition the leading idea of Clavigero's hypothesis, which he, in substance, adopted, not however without several modifications, that were exceedingly ingenious. This hypothesis, or theory, as it was called by the learned lecturer, we shall endeavor to present as correctly as it can be done from memory, upon which we are obliged to rely entirely, and if that serves us rightly, the leading points of his theory were as follows:

The most remarkable monuments found in this continent to the present time, are those of Central America, in Guatemala, Palenque, and Yucatan, similar to which are those that have been discovered in several islands of the Pacific Ocean, and all of them resembling the ruins existing in Hindostan and other parts of eastern Asia; which facts lead directly to the conclusion, that the civilization of Central America was derived from the coast of eastern Asia; the monuments in the intermediate islands between America and Asia, being a sort of landmark which the colony set up along its route.

Did the builders of these temples and pyramids come to this country by land or by sea? To this question, the same answer