Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/181

 SECT. V.] GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 145 on every other subject which he has discussed. Much remains to be done, and all the attainable materials have not yet been collected. All that remains of ancient paintings, hiero- glyphic or descriptive, should be collected and published ; fair and correct drawings of many ancient monuments are still wanted.* The works, in the Indian languages, of the earliest writers after the conquest should be translated; and every other proof collected of the authenticity of the Mexican and Peruvian annals, and of that of the paintings, or other means of transmit- ting the knowledge of events, on which they are founded. Should subsequent investigations fail of adducing satisfactory proofs of a connexion between the civilization of America and that of the other hemisphere, the progress that had been made in America has, after all, nothing so wonderful as to render it absolutely necessary to resort to the supposition of a foreign importation. On the probable supposition, that the whole conti- nent of America was inhabited one thousand years after the flood, or near four thousand years ago, the faculties of man, gradually unfolded and improved, may, in the course of so long a period, have produced, without any extraneous aid, that more advanced state of society and of knowledge, which existed in some parts of America, when first discovered by the Europeans. Those centres of American civilization were all found precisely in those places, where we might have expected to find them, if that civilization was of domestic origin. Those countries where, on account of the climate, greater exertions are required in order to obtain the necessaries and comforts of life, may be those which ultimately will make the greatest progress in the arts and in the acquirement of wealth and knowledge ; but they are not those where civilization has been found generally to originate. We uniformly trace its commencement and first progress in the other hemisphere, in countries equally exempt from the rigor of severe winters, and from the excessive heat of the Torrid Zone. In America, the corresponding latitudes are subject in winter to cold as severe as that of the north of Germany ; whilst, in the Torrid Zone, exten- sive and fruitful districts of elevated table land and valleys enjoy a climate as mild and favorable, as the banks of the Euphrates suspicious, as relates to the style of architecture, and still more as to the correctness with which the human figures are drawn. VOL. II. 19
 * Some of the plates of Delrio's account of the City of Stones appear