philosophers, than the elucidation of this extraordinary anomaly, in the history of the Indian race: nothing is known of the mode in which America was peopled, except the fact, that the tide of population has set, constantly, from north to south. Analogies are said to have been discovered between the language of some of the Indians in the southern parts of Chile, and that used by the Aztec race in Mexico; but the intermediate space is filled up by dialects of an entirely distinct character; nor is there the slightest connexion between the Peruvian and the Mexican tongue, notwithstanding the preeminence, in point of civilization, which each of these nations had attained. It would be interesting, indeed, to discover some mode of explaining these singular facts, and pointing out the region, from which these successive swarms of emigrants must have issued, and the Babel, where their confusion of tongues originated. I do not believe that even a probable conjecture upon this subject has yet been made.
It was the policy of Spain to promote a constant rivality between the different classes of inhabitants in her colonies, by creating little imaginary shades of superiority amongst them, which prevented any two from having a common interest. Of the causes of the enmity, which prevailed between the Creoles and the Gachupines, I shall have occasion to speak, more at large, in treating of the Colonial policy of
