the discovery
proved so astounding that all Europe joined in extolling, what all
Europe had a little before, disbelieved. A continent stretching little
under 10,000 miles, from south to north, with a maximum breath of 2000
miles, between sea and sea, rivers, such as the La Plata and the
Amazon--mountains like that of the Andes, whose highest peak rises
20,280 feet above the sea--Volcanoes, which cast their fires over
plains of interminable extent--tropical fruits of every kind--mines of
gold and silver the richest the world had ever known--these were some
of the features that America brought to light, while it added one-third
to the known area, and more than one-third to the commercial resources
of the world.

But while men gazed at its lofty mountains, and geological
magnificence, the ancient race of men, who were found here, constituted
by far the most curious and thought-inspiring problem. Volcanoes and
vast plains and mountains were elements in the geography of the old
world, and their occurrence here, soon assimilated their discovery to
other features of the kind. But the red man continued to furnish a
theme for speculation and inquiry, which time has not satisfied.
Columbus, supposing himself to have found, what he had sailed for, and
judging from physical characteristics alone, called them _Indians_.
Usage has perpetuated the term. But if, by the term, it is designed to
consider them as of that part of India, which is filled with the Hindoo
race, there is but little resemblance beyond mere physical traits. Of
the leading idea of the multiform incarnations of the terrible, and
degraded Hindoo deities--of the burning of widows at the funereal
pile--of infanticide--of the gross idolatry rendered to images, like
those of Vishnoo and Juggernaut, there is nothing. The degraded forms
of superstition and human vice which are practised on the Ganges and
the Burrampooter, are unknown on the Mississippi and the Missouri. Nor
have we found, so far as I am aware, a single word in the American
languages, which exists in the Hindostanee.

The philosophers and ecclesiastics of the sixteenth century, who
discussed the subject of the origin of the American Tribes, have left
scarcely a portion of the globe untouched by their researches, or from
which, they have not attempted, by some analogies, to deduce them.
Generalization, as soon as Columbus returned from his first voyage,
took an unlimited latitude; and theories were advanc