the empire of the Mongols. De Guignes has shewn, from the Chinese annals, that the existence of a civilized power in America had been known in China before the time of Columbus; and Mr. Squier, in the work to which I have several times referred as the most careful and trustworthy of American works on the subject, has distinctly stated, though somewhat contrary to what seem his own predilections for the theory of an aboriginal civilization, "that in India are found the almost exact counterparts of the religious structures of Central America, analogies furnishing the strongest support of the hypothesis which places the origin of American semi-civilization in southern Asia" (p. 249). Other writers have pointed out the analogies of languages between various nations of South America and the inhabitants of Polynesia; as Dr. Barton in America, Vater in Germany, and Lang in his "Origin and Migrations of the Polynesians." The latter author, though he has also been led away too much by his theory to give it an exclusive operation, has shewn the identity of the peoples, so as to make it almost a certainty, that if we had such vocabularies as before suggested of South American and Polynesian languages carefully drawn out, we might be enabled clearly to trace the affinities of perhaps every nation on the continent. Beyond these authorities, if we compare the handiworks and manufactures of the one with those of the other people, I think there can be no doubt remaining in our minds of their being of the same origin. On this point I content myself with referring to the valuable work published at Vienna in 1851, entitled "Peruvian Antiquities," to compare the representations therein given of those remains with the articles from Polynesia in the British Museum and other museums, in corroboration of these statements.
In all these cases the suppositions point to an Asiatic or Mongolian origin for the great body of the American Indians, which would account for their strong general resemblance. But it is not the less probable, in the presence of this fact, that there might still have been found on the American continent descendants of colonists from other parts of the world. The Esquimaux, as before mentioned, have been generally considered of European origin; and though later researches have tended to shew a strong probability of that people belonging rather to the north of Asia, we may coincide in the belief of their having affinities with the white race of mankind from their complexion, though they have the oblique eye, and perhaps other features, more akin to the Mongols. Whether it was these people whom Grotius
