by their parents; but the Mexican and Peruvian Indians, those of Quito and New Grenada, are agriculturists, who can only be compared with the class of European peasantry. We can have no doubt then that the absence of natural deformities among them is the effect of their mode of life, and of the constitution peculiar to their race. All the men of very swarthy complexion, those of Mongol and American origin, and especially the negros, participate in the same advantage. We are inclined to believe that the Arab-European race possesses a greater flexibility of organization, and that it is easier modified by a great number of exterior causes, such as variety of aliments, climates, and habits, and consequently has a greater tendency to deviate from its original model.

What we have been stating as to the exterior form of the indigenous Americans confirms the accounts of other travellers of the striking analogy between the Americans and the Mongol race. This analogy is particularly evident in the colour of the skin and hair, in the defective beard, high cheek bones, and in the direction of the eyes. We cannot refuse to admit that the human species does not contain races resembling one another more than the Americans, Mongols, Mantcheoux, and Malays. But the resemblance of some features does not constitute an identity of race. If the hieroglyphical paintings and traditions of the inhabitants of Anahuac, collected by the first con

querors, appear to indicate that a swarm of wandering tribes spread from the north-west towards the south, we must not therefore conclude that all the Indians of the new continent are of Asiatic origin. In fact, osteology teaches us that the cranium of the American differs essentially from that of the Mongol: the former exhibits a facial line, more inclined, though straighter, than that of the negro; and there is no race on the globe in which the frontal bone is more depressed backwards, or which has a less projecting forehead*. The cheek-bones of the American are almost as prominent as those of the Mongol; but the contours are more rounded, and the angles not so

* This extraordinary flatness is to be found among nations to whom the means of producing artificial deformity are totally unknown, as is proved by the crania of Mexican Indians, Peruvians, and Atures, brought over by M. Bonpland and myself, of which several were deposited in the Museum of Natural History at Paris. I am inclined to believe that the barbarous custom which prevails among several hordes of pressing the heads of children between two boards had its origin in the idea that beauty consists in such a form of the frontal bone as to characterise the race in a decided manner. The negros give the preference to the thickest and most prominent lips; the Calmucks to turned-up noses; and the Greeks in the statues of heroes have raised the facial line from 85° to 100° beyond nature. (Cuvier, Anat. Comparee, 1. II. p. 6.) The Aztecs, who never disfigure the heads of their children, represent their principal divinities, as their hieroglyphical manuscripts prove, with a head much more flattened than any I have ever seen among the Caribs.

sharp. The under jaw is larger than the negros, and its branches are less dispersed than the Mongols. The occipital bone is less curved (bombé), and the protuberances which correspond to the cerebellum, to which the system of M. Gall attaches great importance, are scarcely sensible. Perhaps this race of copper-coloured men, comprehended under the general name of American Indians, is a mixture of Asiatic tribes, and the aborigines of this vast continent; and it is not unlikely also that the figures with enormous aquiline noses, observed in the hieroglyphical Mexican paintings preserved at Vienna, Veletri, and Rome, as in my historical fragments, indicated the physiognomy of some races now extinct. The Canadian savages call themselves Metoktheniakes, born of the sun, without allowing themselves to be persuaded of the contrary by the black robes*, a name which they give to the missionaries.

As to the moral faculties of the Indians, it is difficult to appreciate them with justice, if we only consider this long oppressed cast in their present state of degradation. The better sort of Indians, among whom a certain degree of intellectual culture might be supposed, perished in great part at the commencement of the Spanish conquest, the victims of European ferocity. The Christian fanaticism broke out in a particular manner against the

* Volney, t. II. p. 438.

Aztec priests; and the Teopixqui, or ministers of the divinity, and all those who inhabited the Teocalli*, or houses of God, who might be considered as the depositories of the historical, mythological, and astronomical knowledge of the country, were exterminated; for the priests observed the meridian shade in the gnomons, and regulated the calendar. The monks burned the hieroglyphical paintings, by which every kind of knowledge was transmitted from generation to generation. The people, deprived of these means of instruction, were plunged in an ignorance so much the deeper as the missionaries were unskilled in the Mexican languages, and could substitute few new ideas in the place of the old. The Indian women who had preserved any share of fortune chose rather to ally with the conquerors than to share the contempt in which the Indians were held. The Spanish soldiers were so much the more eager for these alliances, as very few European women had followed the army. The remaining natives then consisted only of the most indigent race, poor cultivators, artisans, among whom were a great number of weavers, porters, who were used like beasts of burden, and especially of those dregs of the people, those crowds of beggars, who bore witness to the imperfection of the social institutions, and the existence of feudal oppression, and who filled, in the time of

* From Teotl, God, E05.

Cortez, the streets of all the great cities of the Mexican empire. How shall we judge, then, from these miserable remains of a powerful people, of the degree of cultivation to which, it had risen from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, and of the intellectual developement of which it is susceptible? If all that remained of the French or German nation were a few poor agriculturists, could we read in their features that they belonged to nations which had produced a Descartes and Clairaut, a Kepler and a Leibnitz?

We observe that even in Europe the lower people, for whole centuries, make very slow progress in civilization. The peasant of Brittany or Normandy, and the inhabitant of the north of Scotland, differ very little at this day from what they were in the time of Henry the Fourth and James the First... When we consider attentively what is related in the letters of Cortez, the me moirs of Bernal Diaz, written with admirable nai veté, and other contemporary historians, as to the state of the inhabitants of Mexico, Tezcuco,

* What is here asserted of the highlands of Scotland might have had more foundation fifty years ago. A barren and mountainous country must ever oppose great obstacles to improvement and civilization; but it is believed that these obstacles have seldom been more successfully overcome than in the highlands. Of this abundant proof might be found in the statistical account of Scotland, did not the high moral character observable in the highland regiments establish it beyond a doubt. Trans.