abreast, but followed one another in the form of the Indian file. The Tongusi, the most numerous nation resident in Siberia, use canoes made of birch bark, distended over ribs of wood, and nicely sewed together. In these customs they are exactly imitated by the Indians of A merica. In burying the dead, many of the American nations place the corps at full length, others place it in a sitting posture, and lay by it the most valuable clothing, provision, and arms. The Tartars did the same; and both people agreed in covering the whole with earth, so as to form a tumulus or barrow. The method, in which both people treated their nearest friends and relations, was still more extraordinary and uncommon. When their fathers and nearest friends were become extremely old and infirm, or were seized with a distemper deemed incurable, it was the custom of the Tartars to make a small hut for the patient, near some river, and to supply it with a small quan. tity of provisions: Removing the sufferer to such a situation, they left him to end his days, without visiting or affording him any further relief. The rudest, tribes of the Americans, in several parts of the continent, had the same custom; and sometimes they made use of force to extinguish the remains of life, in their diseased and aged friends. Both people adopted this custom, opposite to the practice of all other nations And they both viewed it in the same light, not as an act of cruelty, or of any disrespect; but as a deed of duty, and mercy: And they both assigned the same reason for it: "They were kindly relieving their friends from VOL. I. E 2

the increasing and unavoidable miseries of life; and they were assisting them in their journey to the other country." Nor is it to be doubted but that they assigned the true reason and mo tive, upon which they acted; for no people were ever known to pay a greater reverence to the aged, or were more enthusiastic in the venera tion they paid to the tombs and memories of their ancestors.

SUCH Customs are not derived from any nat. ural appetite, or from any thing peculiar to the state of the hunter, or the savage; but must be deemed extraordinary, uncommon, and arbitrary. Being found only among the men of Asia and America, the presumption is, that they were derived from the one to the other; or that the latter had taken them from the former.

4. In the empire of Peru, there were several appearances of Chinese customs and manners. The appearance, the dress, and the superior knowledge, of Manco Capac and Mama Ocollo; the knowledge of agriculture and the arts, in which the one instructed the men: the knowl edge of spinning, knitting, weaving, and making garments of cotton, which the other diffused among the women; the high estimation which the children of the sun assigned to agriculture, above all other arts and professions; their custom of tilling a field with their own hands; the ceremony with which the Inca began the business in the spring; the festivals which attended it; the unlimited authority of the emperor, with the patriarchal aspect of the government; the benevolent tendency of their laws, and wars; and their public regulations respecting roads,

bridges, canals, industry, provision for the poor and aged, and the responsibility of parents for the conduct of their children; all, or most of these articles, bore a greater resemblance to Chinese maxims, manners, and customs, than could have been acquired in America, during the life of one man and woman, from their own observations and reasonings. They were advances towards a state of civilization, that nothing in the degraded state of the Peruvians, could have suggested, or produced, but in a long period of time.

MUCH pains has been taken by many learned and ingenious men, to compare the languages of the Americans, with those of other nations. But while these inquiries have been carried on with great assiduity, the most ancient language which prevailed in the east, the Sanskreet," the parent of almost every dialect from the Persian gulf to the China seas,"* was itself wholly unknown: And no information has been derived from these inquiries.

WE must reason then from such circumstanees as we can find: And if a judgment can be formed from a similarity of complexion, features, and customs, we shall be led to conclude that the men of America were the same people with the men of Asia; but that their descent, was not from any particular one, but from several nations on the eastern continent.

No difficulty could ever have attended such emigrations. The continents of Asia and America approach so near to each other, that the

Preface to the Grammar of the Bengal Language, p. 3. The first translation from the Sanskreet language was published in 1785.

Inhabitants are frequently passing from the one to the other. The discoveries of the Russians, and the greater discoveries of the most celebrated modern navigator, Captain Cook, have made it certain that if the two continents are seperated at all, it is only by a strait, not more than eighteen miles in width. At no time within the period of history, was the navigation of the rudest tribes unequal to the passage of such a strait. And probably there never has been any difficulty, in passing from the one continent to

the other.

It is not improbable that the red men of Asia, might find a passage into America altogether by navigation. "It has been long

known that the Asiatic nation called the Malayans, possessed in former times, much the largest part of the trade of the Indies; and that their ships frequented, not only all the coasts of Asia, but even those of Africa, and particularly the large island of Madagascar. It has been more lately discovered, that the same nation had extended their voyages and migrations from Madagascar, to the Marquesas, and Easter Island; that is nearly from the east side of Africa, until we approach the west coast of America. This space includes almost one half of the circumference of the globe. Thro this immense space the Malayans had spread, made settlements, and founded colonies in the islands at all the intermediate stages, at an immense distance from the parent continent. The voyages of Captain Cook have afforded the proof of these historical facts: And they have been ascertained not only by a similarity of

manners and customs, but by the affinity of language, and a collection of similar words, made from all the widely diffused islands and countries visited by this celebrated navigator." A PEOPLE who had thus spread over one half of the globe, from the coast of Africa to-wards America, and who had settled all the isl ands that lay between them, could scarcely have avoided arriving upon the western coast of America, and leaving some of her people there. Several of the islands that were settled, were near the American coast; and it must have been much easier to have discovered the continent along the western coast of America, than to have found so many small and scattered islands. It is therefore highly probable, that the same people who spread over the islands in the Pacific ocean, should at times arrive also on the western shores of the continent. In both these ways might people from different nations in Asia, find a passage into America, and at very different periods of time.

The Indians however, were not the only men which appeared in America. Another race or kind of men were settled in the northern parts of the continent. These have been called Esquimaux. In their colour, dimensions, features, and customs, they differed much from the red men. They were of a fallow or brownish complexion: Their size about four feet in height; their faces long and wrinkled; their noses thick and compressed; their eyes small and sunk; their cheeks much raised; their eyebrows and eyelids thick; with small legs and hands, This nation had spread over the most northern