count for the American mounds, though so many thousands in number, yet as not being so numerous, so vast, or so abounding in valuable and curious deposits as the Asiatic, because, as the works of colonists, if we may use the phrase with regard to the builders, they could not be supposed to be so numerous, so settled, or so wealthy, as the inhabitants of the country from which they sprang. Such analogies and considerations, primâ facie, give us considerable reason to expect that we ought to look for the origin of the various American nations in the countries to which they refer; and thus, according to the theory I maintain, the Ethnologist ought to look to Tartary, to compare the languages yet existing there throughout its whole extent with the languages of the people on the eastern shores of North America; while to trace the origin of the various tribes on the western coasts, down to Central America, he ought to compare their languages with those of the nations who inhabit the eastern parts of Asia. Were this course to be sedulously followed, I feel persuaded that very extraordinary analogies might be discovered, and the question of origin and unity of race even might be settled. To effect this object, it must be necessary, not only to accumulate vocabularies and grammars, but also to arrange them in a manner to admit of the easiest reference. For this purpose, then, I should wish to see carried out, with regard to different divisions of continents, the course adopted by our Government when they ordered a general vocabulary of the principal languages of Western and Central Africa to be compiled for the use of the Niger Expedition (London, 1841). Such general vocabularies would, I feel convinced, be found of invaluable assistance for the comparisons desired.
In the same manner, tracing the people of Central and South America, from the Polynesian Islands, from China, Japan, and other countries of Asia, as far as India, we may expect to find in their languages equal analogies. That there was considerable intercourse between the two continents from a period long anterior to Columbus, can scarcely admit of a doubt. Ranking, in his "Historical Researches," has produced some very ingenious arguments to shew that the Peruvian empire was founded by the remnants of a Mongol army that had been sent to conquer Japan, but which had been driven off from that island by a storm, so that none of those composing it had ever returned to their own country. Though we can by no means assent to all his conclusions, yet we must acknowledge that he has adduced strong probabilities of some connection between the Inca dynasty and
