the original dispersion. That they are of the Shemitic stock, cannot be questioned. The only point to be settled, indeed, appears to be, from what branch of that very widely dispersed, and intermingled race of idolaters and warriors they broke loose, and how, and in what manner, and during what era, or eras, they found their way to these shores?

But, however these questions may be decided, this is certain, that civilization, government and arts began to develope themselves first in the tropical regions of Mexico and Central America. Mexico itself, in the process of time, became to the ancient Indian tribes, the Rome of America. Like its proud prototype in Europe, it was invaded by one barbaric tribe after another, to riot and plunder, but who, in the end, adopted the type of civilization, which they came to destroy. Such was the origin of the Toltecs and the Aztecs, whom Cortez conquered.

When we turn our view from this ancient centre of Indian power, to the latitudes of the American Republic, we find the territory covered, at the opening of the sixteenth century, with numerous tribes, of divers languages, existing in the mere hunter state, or at most, with some habits of horticulture superadded. They had neither cattle nor arts. They were bowmen and spearmen—roving and predatory, with very little, if any thing, in their traditions, to link them to these prior central families of men, but with nearly every thing in their physical and intellectual type, to favor such a generic affiliation. They erected groups of mounds, to sacrifice to the sun, moon and stars. They were, originally, fire-worshippers. They spoke one general class of transpositive languages. They had implements of copper, as well as of silex, and porphyries. They made cooking vessels of tempered clay. They carved very beautiful and perfect models of birds and quadrupeds, out of stone, as we see in some recently opened mounds. They cultivated the most important of all the ancient Mexican grains, the zea mays. They raised the tobacco plant, to be offered, to their Gods, as frankincense. They used the Aztec drum in their religious ceremonies and war dances. They employed the very ancient Asiatic art of recording ideas, by means of representative devices. They believed in the oriental doctrines of transformation, and the power of necromancy. Their oral fictions on this head, are so replete with fancy, that they might give scope to the lyre of some future western Ovid. They held, with Pythagoras, the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. They believed, indeed, in duplicate souls. They believed with Zoroaster, in the two great creative and antagonistical principles of Ormusd and Ahriman, and they had then, and have still, an influential and powerful order of priests, who uphold the principles of a sacred fire.

To these principles, they appeal now, as they did in the days of the discovery. They believe in the sacred character of Fire, and regard it as the mysterious element of the Universe, which typifies the Divinity. They believe, and practice strictly, with the descendants of Abraham, the law of separation, but not the practice of circumcision. With the ancient Phœnicians, they attribute extraordinary powers, to the wisdom and subtlety of the Serpent, and this reptile holds a high place in their mythology. They regard the Tortoise, as the original increment, and medium of the creation of the Earth, and view the Bear and the Wolf as enchanted heroes of supernatural energies. And they have adopted the devices of these three animals as the general Totemic types and bond of their separation into clans. They are as observant as any of the orientalists were, of the flight of birds. They draw, with the ancient Chaldeans, prognostications from the clouds. They preserve the simple music of the Arcadian pipe, which is dedicated to love. They people their woods and mountains, and romantic water-falls, with various classes of wood and water nymphs, fairies and genii. They had anticipated the author of the "Rape of the Lock" in the creation of a class of personal gnomes, who nimbly dance over the lineaments of the human frame. They have a class of seers and prophets, who mutter from the ground, the decisions of fate and Providence. They believe in the idea of ghosts, witchcraft, and vampires. They place the utmost reliance on dreams and night visions. A dream and a revelation, are synonymous. Councils are called, and battles are fought on the prognostications of a dream. They are astrologers and star-gazers, and draw no small part of their mythology from the skies. They fast to obtain the favor of the Deity, and they feast, at the return of the first fruits. They have concentrated the wisdom and fancy of their forefathers and sages, in allegories and fables. With the Arabs, they are gifted in the relation of fictitious domestic tales, in which necromancy and genii, constitute the machinery of thought. With the ancient Mesopotamians, Persians and Copts, they practice the old art of ideographic, or picture writing. They are excellent local geographers, and practical naturalists. There is not an animal, fish, insect or reptile in America, whose character and habitudes they do not accurately and practically know. They believe the earth to be a plain, with four corners, and the sky a hemisphere of material substance-like brass, or metal, through which the planets shine, and around which the sun and moon revolve. Over all, they install the power of an original Deity, who is called the Great Spirit, who is worshipped by fire, who is invoked by prayer, and who is regarded, from the cliffs of the Monadnock,¹⁴ to the waters of the Nebraska,¹⁵ as omnipotent, immaterial, and omnipresent.

That this race has dwelt on the continent long centuries before the Christian era, all facts testify. If they are not older as a people, than most of the present nations on the Asiatic shores of the Indian ocean, as has been suggested, they are certainly anterior in age, to the various groups of the Polynesian islands. They have, it is apprehended, taken the impress of their character and mental ideocracy from the early tribes of Western Asia, which was originally peopled, to a great extent, by the descendants of Shem. These fierce tribes crowded each other, as one political wave trenches on another, till they have apparently traversed its utmost bounds. How they have effected the traject here, and by what process, or contingency, are merely curious questions, and can never be satisfactorily answered. The theory of a migration by Behring's straits, is untenable. If we could find adequate motives for men to cross thence, we cannot deduce the tropical animals. We cannot erect a history from materials so slender. It may yield one element of population; but we require the origin of many. But while we seek for times and nations, we have the indubitable evidences of the general event or events in the people before us, and we are justified by philology alone, in assigning to it an epoch or epochs, which are sufficiently remote and conformable to the laws of climate, to account for all the phenomena. No such epoch seems adequate this side of the final overthrow of Babylon, or general dispersion of mankind, or the period of the conquest of Palestine. One singular and extraordinary result, in the fulfilment of a very ancient prophecy of the human family, may be noticed. It is this. Assuming the Indian tribes to be of Shemitic origin, which is generally conceded, they were met on this continent, in 1492, by the Japhetic race, after the two stocks had passed round the globe by directly different routes. Within a few years subsequent to this event, as is well attested, the