Man and His Migrations (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1851 edition. Excerpt: ...instead of being partially refined on and partially abandoned. North-eastern Asia would have passed for the fatherland to North-western America, and instead of Chinese and Japanese characteristics creating wonder when discovered in Mexico and Peru, the only wonder would have been in the rarity of the occurrence. But geographical discovery came from another quarter, and as it was the Indians of the Atlantic whose history first served as food for speculation, the most natural view of the origin of the American population was the last to be adopted--perhaps it has still to be recognized. The reason for all this lies in the following fact. The Eskimo, who form the only family common to the Old and the New World, stand in a remarkable contrast to the unequivocal and admitted American aborigines of Labrador, Newfoundland, Canada, the New England States, New York, and the other well-known, Indians in gene TO THE ESKIMO. 123 ral. Size, manners, physical conformation, and language, all help to separate the two stocks. But this contrast extends only to the parts east of the Rocky Mountains. On the west of them there is no such abruptness, no such definitude, no such trenchant lines of demarcation. The Athabascan dialects of New Caledonia and Russian America are notably interspersed with Eskimo words, and vice versd. So is the Koluch tongue of the parts about New Archangel. As for a remarkable dialect called the Ugalents (or Ugyalyackhmutsi) spoken by a few families about Mount St. Elias, it is truly transitional in character. Besides this, what applies to the languages applies to the other characteristics as well. The lines of separation between the Eskimo and the non-Eskimo Americans are as faint on the Pacific, as they are strong on the Atlantic side of...