picture of him in person – a fact good enough in itself, but not to the purpose.'
Latham's Man and his Migrations, pp. 74-5.
7
Certainly many of the writers must have been either fools or demented, if we judge them by their work and arguments.
8
Garcia, Origen de los Ind., pp. 7-12.
9
When De Gama established the globular form of the earth by his voyage round the Cape of Good Hope, in 1497-8, 'the political consequences that at once ensued placed the Papal Government in a position of great embarrassment. Its traditions and policy forbade it to admit any other than the flat figure of the earth, as revealed in the Scriptures.' In 1520 Magellan discovered the strait which now bears his name, and 'henceforth the theological doctrine of the flatness of the earth was irretrievably overthrown.' Draper's Conflict, pp. 163-5. St Augustin affirmed that the world beyond the tropic of cancer was uninhabited. 'Ea vero veterum sententia, perspicua atque inuicta, vt ipsis videbatur, ratione nitebatur. Nam vt quæque regio ad meridiem propius accedit, ita solis ardoribus magis expositam animaduerterant, idque adeo verum est, vt in eadem Italiæ prouincia Apuliam Liguria, & in nostra Hispania Bæticam Cantabria vsque adeo feruentiorem nota re liceat, vt per gradus vixdum octo grande frigoris & æstus discrimen sit.' Acosta, De Natura Novi Orbis, fol. 27. 'Lactantius Firmianus, and St. Austin, who strangely jear'd at as ridiculous, and not thinking fit for a Serious Answer the Foolish Opinion of Antipodes, or another Habitable World beyond the Equator: At which, Lactantius Drolling, says, what, Forsooth, here is a fine Opinion broach'd indeed; an Antipodes! heigh-day! People whose Feet tread with ours, and walk Foot to Foot with us; their Heads downwards, and yet drop not into the Sky! There, yes, very likely, the Trees loaden with Fruit grow downwards, and it Rains, Hails, and Snows upwards; the Roofs and Spires of Cities, tops of Mountains, point at the Sky beneath them, and the Rivers revers'd topsi-turvy, ready to flow into the Air out of their Channels.' Ogilby's America, pp. 6-7. The ancients believed a large portion of the globe to be uninhabitable by reason of excessive heat, which must have greatly deterred discovery.
10
Touching the question whether the Americans and the people of the old world are of common origin, see: Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. Nat. Civ., tom. i., pp. 1-31; Tylor's Anahuac, p. 104; Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. iv., pp. 14-24; Torquemada, Monarq. Ind., tom. i., pp. 1-31; Ramirez, in Soc. Mex. Geog., Boletin, 2da época, tom. iv., p. 54; M'Culloh's Researches on Amer., pp. 175-8; Mayer's Mex. as it Was, p. 260; Domenech's Deserts, vol. i., pp. 66-80; Prescott's Mex., vol. iii., p. 389; Bradford's Amer. Antiq., pp. 237-49, 351, 354, 420-35; Charlevoix, quoted in Carver's Trav., pp. 197-8; Fontaine's How the World was Peopled, p. 17, et seq.; Crowe's Cent. Amer., p. 61; Williams' Enquiry into Tradition; Chevalier, Mexique, p. 134; Wilson's Pre-Hist. Man, pp. 611-14, 485-6; Carli, Cartas, pt i., p. 16; Chamisso, in Kotzebue's Voyage, vol. ii., pp. 405-6; Prichard's Researches, vol. v., pp. 541-6; Humboldt, Vues, tom. i., pp. 22, 31. Innumerable other speculations have been made on this point, but in most cases by men who were but poorly qualified to deal with a subject requiring not only learning, but a determination to investigate fairly and without bias. Adair's reasoning in this connection will serve to illustrate: 'God employed six days, in creating the heavens, this earth, and the innumerable species of creatures, wherewith it is so amply furnished. The works of a being, infinitely perfect, must entirely answer the design of them: hence there could be no necessity for a second creation; or God's creating many pairs of the human race differing from each other, and fitted for different climates; because, that implies imperfection, in the grand scheme, or a want of power, in the execution of it – Had there been a prior, or later formation of any new class of creatures, they must materially differ from those of the six days work; for it is inconsistent with divine wisdom to make a vain, or unnecessary repetition of the same act. But the American Indians neither vary from the rest of mankind, in their internal construction, nor external appearance, except in colour; which, as hath been shewn, is either entirely accidental, or artificial. As the Mosaic account declares a completion of the manifestation of God's infinite wisdom and power in creation, within that space of time; it follows, that the Indians have lineally descended from Adam, the first, and the great parent of all the human species.' Amer. Ind., pp. 11-12. To the works of those modern scientists, such as Lyell, Darwin, and others, who have treated of the unity of the human species at large, I need not refer the reader here. An excellent résumé of the subject will, however, be found in Foster's Pre-Hist. Races, pp. 353-67.
11
'We find on the earliest Egyptian monuments,' says Sir John Lubbock, 'some of which are certainly as ancient as 2400 B.C., two great distinct types, the Arab on the east and west of Egypt, the Negro on the south. These distinct types still predominate in Egypt and the neighbouring countries. Thus, then, says Mr. Poole, in this immense interval we do not find "the least change in the Negro or the Arab; and even the type which seems to be intermediate between them is virtually as unaltered. Those who consider that length of time can change a type of man, will do well to consider the fact that three thousand years give no ratio on which a calculation could be founded."' Crawfurd, also says: the millions '"of African Negroes that have during three centuries been transported to the New World and its islands, are the same in colour as the present inhabitants of the parent country of their forefathers. The Creole Spaniards, who have for at least as long a time been settled in tropical America, are as fair as the people of Arragon and Andalusia, with the same variety of colour in the hair and eye as their progenitors. The pure Dutch Creole colonists of the Cape of Good Hope, after dwelling two centuries among black Caffres, and yellow Hottentots, do not differ in colour from the people of Holland."' Pre-Hist. Times, pp. 587-8. We find 'upon Egyptian monuments, mostly of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries before the Christian Era, representations of individuals of numerous nations, African, Asiatic, and European, differing in physical characteristics as widely as any equal number of nations of the present age that could be grouped together; among these being negroes of the true Nigritian stamp, depicted with a fidelity as to color and features, hardly to be surpassed by a modern artist. That such diversities had been produced by natural means in the interval between that remote age and the time of Noah, probably no one versed in the science of anatomy and physiology will consider credible.' Foster's Pre-Hist. Races, p. 357.
12
Noticias Americanas, pp. 391-5, 405-7. On pages 286-304, he has an argument, backed by geological evidences, to show that America is the oldest continent.
13
'Were we to admit,' say some ethnologists, 'a unity of origin of such strongly-marked varieties as the Negro and European, differing as they do in colour and bodily constitution, each fitted for distinct climates, and exhibiting some marked peculiarities in their osteological, and even in some details of cranial and cerebral conformation, as well as in their average intellectual endowments, – if, in spite of the fact that all these attributes have been faithfully handed down unaltered for hundreds of generations, we are to believe that, in the course of time, they have all diverged from one common stock, how shall we resist the argument of the transmutationist, who contends that all closely allied species of animals and plants have in like manner sprung from a common parentage?' Lyell's Antiq. of Man, pp. 433-4.
14
Lescarbot, Hist. Nouv. France, lib. i., cap. iii.
15
Hist. Conq. Itza, pp. 26-8.
16
Pamphleteer, 1815. Thompson calculates the spreading of Noah's children up to the time of Peleg, when the Bible declares the earth to have been divided. He also shows that this division happened earlier than is generally supposed.
