currence, as I found not only wooden beams, but also laths, in a yet sound state, in several places, of different ruins in Yucatan.
On the whole, judging that the civilization to which these ruins in Yucatan and Central America owed their origin was a distinct one from that of the Mexicans and Peruvians, whose semi-civilization again was equally distinct from the state of society of the Indians to the north and south of their respective empires, it seems to me still, equally certain that the various tribes found on the American continent had all arrived there many centuries after the other continents had been peopled, and only when those other continents had become fully peopled. The next question, then, for consideration of the subject I have undertaken, is, to ascertain whence those various tribes of American Indians had proceeded.
Before more fully entering on this inquiry, fearing I might be thought by some guilty of an omission if I were not to refer to an opinion held by a great number of writers, that the Indians were descendants of what they call the lost tribes of Israel, I feel compelled to notice it also. The number of writers who have maintained this opinion, or who have allowed it as probable, is so great as to be really astonishing. If they have any readers in the present day relying on their lucubrations as worthy of an answer, I will, in deference to them, go so far as to be observe, 1st. That the ten tribes, as they are called, were never lost at all; and next, that if they were lost, as alleged, there cannot be any the slightest recognisable analogy shewn between the Jews and the Indians, in respect of either language, religious rites, political institutions, or physical characteristics. The absurdity is almost as great as that of another suggestion made on the subject, — that the inhabitants and animals found in the New World had perhaps been carried over by angels, — so extraordinary are the devices to which some persons will have recourse to make marvels of very obvious and natural occurrences.
It would be an almost endless task to detail the various opinions which have been maintained, even by writers of acknowledged judgment and ability, respecting the peopling of America, with any attempt to canvass them minutely. I proceed to examine them as succinctly as the time during which I may trespass on the attention of the Society will admit.
Of the earliest writers on the subject, the greater number held that the progenitors of the American Indians had come
