SECT. V.] GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 143 that their number is therefore doubled within less than twenty- three years. So long as man, compelled to seek, or voluntarily seeking new places of residence, found in his progress no obstacle from more ancient inhabitants, there was no impedi- ment, that could either arrest his march, or retard the natural increase of the population. We know this to be the fact with respect to an agricultural nation. Hunting tribes would meet with no greater difficulty in finding means of subsistence ade- quate to a similar increase in their numbers ; the only difference being that, wanting more space for that purpose, they must have moved faster, and have peopled the earth in their own way, in a shorter time than agricultural nations would have done. Assuming the central parts of Asia to have been the cradle of mankind, and since three couples would, in thirty periods of duplication, increase to more than six thousand millions of souls, we may fairly infer, not only the possibility ? but even the proba- bility, that America began to he inhabited only five or six hun- dred years later than the other hemisphere.* Another problem perhaps more interesting, and the solution of which is not less difficult, is that of the origin of the semi- civilization which was found to exist in certain parts of America. With respect to our own Indians, the only difficulty consists in assigning sufficient reasons for their having remained during so many centuries in the slate of comparative inferiority in which we found them. It is perhaps partly on that account, that the Europeans were astonished to find, in Mexico and Peru, a great comparative progress, and in every respect a much farther advanced state of civilization. Yet it is but lately, that any plausible reasons have been suggested, in support of the opinion that assigns a foreign origin to that civilization. The proofs attempted to be deduced from the affinities of languages, appear insufficient. In comparing the vocabularies of twenty distinct American, with those of as many Asiatic languages, accidental coincidences will necessarily occur. The similarity of the structure and grammatical forms of those of America indicates a common origin, and renders it probable that the great diversity of their vocabularies took place in America. Should that have been
- These observations must be understood, as they wore intended, as
only showing that there is nothing in the American languages and the early epoch which may thence be deduced of the American population, inconsistent with the opinion of an Asiatic origin and with the received chronology.
