5. ABORIGINES OF AMERICA, Derivation.—
Whence came those aboriginals of
America? Discoveries, long ago made, were
sufficient to show that the passage from Europe
to America was always practicable, even to the
imperfect navigation of ancient times. In going
from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to
Greenland, from Greenland to Labrador, the
first traject is the widest; and this having been
practised from the earliest times of which we
have any account of that part of the earth, it is
not difficult to suppose that the subsequent trajects
may have been sometimes passed. Again,
the late discoveries of Captain Cook, coasting
from Kamchatka to California, have proved that
if the two continents of Asia and America be
separated at all, it is only by a narrow strait.
So that from this side also, inhabitants May
have passed into America; and the resemblance
between the Indians of America and the eastern
inhabitants of Asia, would induce us to conjecture,
that the former are the descendants of the
latter, or the latter of the former; excepting
indeed the Esquimaux, who, from the same circumstance
of resemblance, and from identity of
language, must be derived from the Greenlanders,
and these probably from some of the northern
parts of the old continent.—
Notes on Virginia.
Washington ed. viii, 344.
Ford ed., iii, 205.
(1782)
