Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852 edition. Excerpt: ... 194 AMERICA. CHAPTER VI. The Monosyllablic Area--the T'hay--the Mon and Kho--Tables--the B'hot--the Chinese--Burmese--Persia--India--Tamulian family--the Brahut--the Dioscurians--the Georgians--Iron--Mizjeji--Lesgians--Armeniens--Asia Minor--Lycians--Carians--Paropamisans--Conclusion. Our plan is now to ta keup the different lines of migration at the points where they were respectively broken off. This was at their different points of contact with Asia. The first line was--I. The American.--In affiliating the American with the Asiatic, the ethnologist is in the position of an irrigator, who supplies some wide tract of thirsty land with water derived from a higher level, but kept from the parts below by artificial embankments. These he removes; his process being simple but effectual, and wholly independent of the clever machinery of pumps, water-wheels, and similar branches of hydraulics. The obstacle being taken away, gravitation does the rest. The over-valuation of the Eskimo peculiarities is the great obstacle to American ethnology. AMERICA. 195 "When these are cut down to their due level, the connection between America and Asia is neither more nor less than one of the clearest we have. It is certainly clearer than the junction of Africa and north-western Asia; not more obscure than that between Oceanica and the Transgangetic Peninsula; and incalculably less mysterious than that which joins Asia to Europe. Indeed, there is no very great break, either philologically or anatomically, until we reach the confines of China. Here, the physical conformation keeps much the same; the language, however, becomes monosyllabic. Now many able writers lay so much stress upon this monosyllabic character, as to believe that the separation between the...