Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[503] to dive under these waves of migration, to remove, as it were, the trace of their passage, and to read the true history of the past inhabitants of the different parts of the world, when it will be found, if all analogies are not deceptive, that every country equaling in extent those within the limits of which distinct nationalities are known to have played their part in history, has had its distinct aborigines, the character of which it is now the duty of naturalists to restore, if it be not too late, in the same manner as paleontologists restore fossil remains. I have already made some attempts, by studying ancient geography, and I hope the task may yet be accomplished. Look, for instance, at Spain. The Iberians are known as the first inhabitants, never extending much beyond the Pyrenees to the Garonne, and along the gulfs of Lyons and Genoa. As early as during the period of Phoenician prosperity they raised wool from their native sheep, derived from the Mouflon, still found wild in Spain, Corsica, and Sardinia; they had a peculiar breed of horses, to this day differing from all other horses in the world. Is this not better evidence of their independent origin, than is the fancied lineage with the Indo-Germanic family of their