Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/332

Rh race is concerned?" Is it daring to question this? How small is the geographical space covered by the history of the Old Testament! It is an established fact, that the whole of the animal races are not common to both Continents. A great variety of quadrupeds have been found in America that were unknown in Europe, and the same is true in regard to birds and fish.

It is difficult to touch this question, without interfering with the authority of the Pentateuch; but if we were at liberty to discuss such matters, there are few who would not hold the doctrine, that it is perfectly reconcilable with rational science to believe, that the two Continents existed contemporaneously from the oldest periods, filled with distinct races, of separate customs, manners, habits and languages; who, by the simple and natural impulses of humanity arrived at similar results, in religion, science, architecture and government. Animals found in both hemispheres arrive at the same results—why may not man? It is replied, that they are guided alone by instincts? Is it not by his instincts, improved by his reason, that man, too, is led to every operation of his varied life? By the ruins which are left, of what those instincts and reason once produced on this Continent, we are alone enabled to judge of our ancestors. Defence—protection from the weather—religion—the calculation of time—the necessity of food;—these are the chief instinctive wants and promptings of man's nature. Men suffer from the seasons, from sun and shower,—whence dwellings. Men have a natural feeling of adoration, gratitude, dependence,—hence religion, groves, altars, mounds, and even pyramids, as they advance in civilization. Men behold the natural changes of day and night; the motion of the sun, moon and stars; they note that there is an equality of time and season, and that these are comparatively of longer or shorter duration at different periods of the year,—and hence a calendar. Men are social, and congregate into societies, and in the process of time their natural passions beget discontent and wars,—hence fortifications and weapons of defence. Men hunger,—and hence the invention of instruments by which they succeed in the sports of the field, or control the chase. And, at length, with all the elements of civilized society around them, in shrines, bulwarks, domestic retreats, arsenals, social love, and national glory—they come to have a history; and, with the laudable desire of perpetuating the memory of themselves and of their epoch, you find at Palenque, as well as in Egypt and on the Ganges, those figured monuments which tell the tale of the departed great, by symbols, letters, paintings or hieroglyphics.

Now, separated by thousands of leagues of sea from the Eastern hemisphere, and with men who had no means, but the frail canoe, of transporting themselves over it, you suddenly alight on these shores, in the midst of the sixteenth century;—and find temples, idols, the remains of dwellings, fortifications, weapons of defence and chase, astronomical calendars, and people, worshipping, living and governing in the midst of every external evidence of ancient civilization. The whole of North America, we have