earth or
clay.

The dreams and false hypotheses upon America have amused the learned for
ages: in attempting to account for the origin of the Americans and
their monuments, they have generally neglected to compare them with the
monuments and languages of all the other nations scattered over the
whole earth, or else only taking a partial view of them, comparing a few
fragments of two or three nations or regions, a few words of a
centesimal part of the actual languages, the writers or historians have
fallen into egregious mistakes; more fond of systematic errors than
hidden truth, they have indulged, without due consideration, in mere
dreams or systems, based on a few facts, that are overruled by hundreds
of other facts, unknown to them, or neglected when known. It would be
useless and tedious to refute again such false systems, that have been
refuted and upset by each other. It may, however, be needful, perhaps,
to mention three of the most absurd, in order to warn against them, or
show their improbability and impossibility. They may be called for
distinction sake, the _Jewish_ system, the _Mongolic_ system, and the
_American_ system.

Among these the first named is one of the oldest, and at the same time,
has yet a powerful hold upon many minds; it ascribes the whole American
population with one hundred languages and one thousand dialects, myriads
of ruins and monuments, _to the Jews_! either of the ten dispersed
tribes, who were not Jews but Israelites--or of Solomon's time and
voyages, while the Jews only began to exist as such after his death--or
of patriarchal times antecedent to their existence, when they were only
OBRIM, whom we miscall _Hebrews_, or going still further back to the
times of Noah and Peleg, when not even the Obrim had any existence. It
has been proved that the American nations did not possess the use of
the plough, iron, alphabets, or week of seven days, which no Jewish nor
Hebrew descendants could have forgotten. The American languages have as
much, or more affinities with the Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic,
Persian, Berber, Turkish, &c., languages, than with the old and modern
Hebrew and Arabic. The Jews or IEUDI, who only began two thousand four
hundred years ago were not navigators; therefore it is evident that they
cannot have come to America and produced here the two thousand nations
and tribes of this vast continent: nay, not even a single one of them
perhaps.

The Mongolic opinion, lat