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ner, they abounded on the plateau of
Mexico, the nat-
ural highway of wanderers.
On the western shore of
America, also, there are more languages than on the east; on the
Atlantic coast, as if to indicate that it had never been a thoroughfare, one extended from
Cape Fear to the Esquimaux; on the west, between the latitude of forty degrees and the Esquimaux, there were at least four or five.
The
Californians derived
Ribas, <*> i. c. VI and l. III c. III. |
their ancestors from the north; the Aztecks preserve a narrative of their northern origin, which their choice of residence in a mountain region confirmed.
At the north, the continents of
Asia and
America nearly meet.
In the latitude of sixty-five degrees fifty minutes, a line across Behring's Straits, from Cape Prince of
Wales to Cape Tschowkotskoy, would meas-
Beechey's Voyage to Behring's Straits. |
ure a fraction less than forty-four geographical miles; and three small islands divide the distance.
But within the latitude of fifty-five degrees, the
Aleutian Isles stretch from the great promontory of
Alaska so far to the west, that the last of the archipelago is but three hundred and sixty geographical miles from the east of Kamschatka; and that distance is so divided by the
Mednoi Island and the group of Behring, that, were boats to pass from islet to islet from Kamschatka to
Alaska, the longest navigation in the open sea would not exceed two hundred geographical miles, and at no moment need the mariner be more
than forty leagues distant from land: and a chain of thickly-set isles extends from the south of Kamschatka to
Corea.
Now, the Micmac on the north-east of our continent would, in his frail boat, venture thirty or forty leagues out at sea: a Micmac savage, then, steering from isle to isle, might in his birch-bark canoe have made the voyage from North-West America to
China.
