Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/143

Rh most earnest of observers in these enquiries, D'Orbigny, is quoted by Dr. Prichard as saying, and with great truth, "as a general position we may regard each particular nation as having between its members a family resemblance, which distinguishing it clearly from its neighbours, permits the practised eye of the Zoologist to recognize in the great assemblage of nations, all the existing types, almost without ever confounding them. A Peruvian" he concludes emphatically, "is more different from a Patagonian and a Patagonian from a Guarini than is a Greek from an Ethiopian or a Mongolian" p. 296. Such are the terms, in which this distinguished naturalist has written of three contiguous people of South-America; and though I must confess that the assertions he makes appear somewhat startling, yet I should not hesitate to adopt them rather than the commonly received notions of a general family resemblance, running through the entire Continents of the New World. My own observations both in North and South America decidedly lead me to the same conclusions, but before adverting to them, I will illustrate my views by adducing a few more instances to the same effect from authors quoted by Dr. Prichard on the people of America, in support of the theory that the different nations of America came originally from different parts of the Old World, to the inhabitants of which in their successive generations they still show very noticeable affinities. It is not to be expected that positive evidences can be adduced in every case, but if satisfactory evidence can be brought forward with regard to some of them, then the same conclusions may reasonably be asked for them all. The illustrations found in particular travellers, I would contend, might have been given by the greater part of them, had they possessed the necessary qualities to make available the advantages they had in their visits to different countries. Instead however of seeking to make useful their observations the most part deal only in generalities, which perplex instead of satisfying their readers. Thus they give to the people they meet with a variety of different names, without ever taking the trouble to ascertain whether they were not all the same, and sometimes in their own ignorance observing there is some difference in their languages hastily pronounce them to be different, when oftentimes they are only dialects of the same idiom. The science of Ethnology connects the widely spread families of mankind together, and the best informed travellers accordingly tell us in corroboration of its doctrines, that many seemingly distinct divisions of men are in reality very closely connected. The so-called innumerable distinct