HISTORY OF AMERICA.

COLUMBUS in his third voyage, having attained the great object of his ambition, by discovering the continent of America; his success produced a number of adventurers from all nations; the year before this, Sebastian Cabot, in the service of Henry the Seventh of England, discovered the Northern continent, of which it is intended now explicitly to treat. The questions which first present themselves to our notice 'are, From what part of the Old World has America been peopled? and how accomplished? Few questions in the history of Mankind have been more agitated than these. Philosophers and men of learning and ingenuity, have been speculating upon them ever since the discovery of the American islands by Columbus. But notwithstanding all their labours, the subject still affords an ample field for the researches of the man of science, and for the fancies of the theorist.

It has been long known that an intercourse between the old Continent and America, might be carried on with facility, from the north-west extremities of Europe, and the north-east boundaries of Asia. In the year 982 the Norwegians discovered Greenland, and planted a colony there. The communication with that country was renewed in the last century by Moravian missionaries, in order to propagate their doctrines in that bleak uncultivated region. By them we are informed that the north-west coast of Greenland is separated from America by a very narrow strait; that at the bottom of the bay it is highly probable they are united; that the Esquimeaux of America, perfectly resemble the Greenlanders, in their aspect, dress, and manner of living; and that a Moravian missionary, well acquainted guage of Greenland, having visited the country

Lof the Feanimeen found to his astonishment that they

same people. The same species of animals, a in the contiguous regions. The bear, the wol hare, the deer, the roe-buck, and the elk, freque of North America, as well as those in the nor

Other discoveries have proved, that if the t of Asia and America be separated at all, it narrow strait. From this part of the old co inhabitants may have passed into the new; an blance between the Indians of America, and inhabitants of Asia, would induce us to com they have a common origin. This opinioni the celebrated doctor Robertson, in his History The more recent and accurate discoveries of th navigator, Cooke, and his successor Clerke, the matter still nearer to a certainty.

The sea, from the south of Behring's straits cent of isles between Asia and America, is It deepens from these straits (as the British those of Dover) till the soundings are lost in Ocean; but that does not take place but to the isles. Between them and the straits is an in 12 to 54 fathoms, except only of St. Thaddeusthere is a channel of a greater depth.

From the volcanic disposition, it has been bable, not only that there was a separation of th at the straits of Behring, but that the whole the isles to the small opening, had once been land; and that the fury of the watery element, that of fire, had, in some remote times, subverte whelmed the tract, and left the islands to ser mental fragments.

There can be no doubt that our planet has b to great vicissitudes since the deluge: ancient historians confirm this truth, that lands are now over which ships formerly sailed; and that tl over lands, which were formerly cultivated: e have swallowed some lands, and subterraneou thrown up others; the sea retreating from its lengthened the land in some places, and encroa it in others, has diminished it; it has sepat territories, which were formerly united, and fo

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Revolutions of this nature happened in the last century. Sicily was united to the continent of Naples, as Eubœa now the Black sea, was to Bœotia. Diodorus, Strabo, and other ancient authors say the same thing of Spain, and of Africa; and affirm, that by a violent irruption of the ocean upon the land between the mountains of Abyla, and Calpe, that communication was broken, and the Mediterranean sea was formed. Among the people of Ceylon, there is a tradition, that a similar irruption of the sea, separated their island from the peninsula of India; the same thing is believed by those of Malabar, with respect to the Maldivian isles, and by the Malayans, with respect to Su

matra.

The count de Buffon is certain, that in Ceylon the earth has lost thirty or forty leagues, taken from it by the sea. The same author asserts, that Louisiana has only been formed by the mud of rivers. Pliny, Seneca, Diodorus, and others, report innumerable examples of similar revolutions.

In the strait which separates America from Asia, many reases islands are found, which are supposed to be the mountainous 055, parts of land, formerly swallowed up by earthquakes: which appears the more probable, by the multitude of volcanoes, now known in the peninsula of Kamtschatka. It is imagincontiners ed, however, that the sinking of that land and the separaspace tion of the two continents, has been occasioned by those ccupied great earthquakes, mentioned in the history of the Ameriactuated cans: which formed an æra almost as memorable as that of the deluge. We can form no conjecture of the time e as

1 and over

een subjec

mentioned in the histories of the Toltecas, or of the year I.

Tecpatl, when that great calamity happened.

If a great earthquake should overwhelm the isthmus of

and moden Suez, and there should be at the same time, a great of pouce scarcity of historians, as there were in the first as great ey nos deluge, it would be doubted in three or four hundred years earthquess after, whether Asia had is fives. Africa; and many would firmly deny it.

shores,

ever been united by that part to

Whether that great event, the separation of the conti

aching upa nents, took place before, or after the population of Ame

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rica, it is impossible to determine; but we are indebted to the above-mentioned navigators, for settling the long dis

observations prove, that in one place the dis continent and continent is only thirty-nine r the middle of this narrow strait, there are which would greatly facilitate the passage o into the New World, supposing it took pla after the convulsion which rent the two con der.

It may also be added, that these straits ar Summer, often filled with ice; in winter fre as to admit a passage for mankind, and by w peds might easily cross, and stock the co where from the vast expanse of the north-east fix on the first tribes who contributed to pe continent, now inhabited from end to end, is has baffled human reason. The learned ma and ingenious conjectures, but plain good always accede to them.

As mankind increased in numbers, they r truded one another forward. Wars might be a of migrations. No reason appears, why the might not be an officina vivorum as well as th The overteeming country to the east of the Ri tains, must have found it necessary to discha bitants: the first great increase of people wer wards by the next to it; at length reaching the its of the Old World, found a New one, with to occupy unmolested, for ages; till Columbu hour for them, discovered their country; w again new sins and new deaths to both worlds possible, with the lights which we have so recen to admit, that America could receive its inha is, the bulk of them) from any other place Asia. A few proofs may be added, taken fr toms or dresses, common to the inhabitants of Some have been long extinct in the old, other both in full force.

The custom of scalping, was a barbarism the Scythians, who carried about them at al savage mark of triumph. A little image found Kalmucs, of a Tartarian deity, mounted on a sitting on a human skin, with scalps pendan breast, fully illustrates the custom of the ancien