the fouth pole. The fea cannot little we know towards the fouth; eafily pass the boundaries of the the direction of the mountains of tropics, if the temperate and frozen Tartary and Europe, which is from zones are not nearer the centre of Eaft to Weft, with that of the the earth than the torrid zone. It Cordeleras which run from North is the fea therefore that maintains to South; the mind is in fufpenfe, an equilibrium with the land, and and we have the mortification to difpotes the arrangement, of the fee the order and fymmetry vanish materials that compofe it. One with which we had embellished our proof that the two analogous por- fyftem of the earth. The obferver tions of land which the two con- is ftill more difpleafed with his tinents of the globe prefent at firft conjectures, when he confiders the view, are not effentially neceffary immenfe height of the mountains to its conformation, is, that the of Peru. He is then aftonished to new hemisphere has remained co- fee a continent fo recent and yet fo vered with the waters of the fea, a elevated, the fea, fo much below mach longer time than the old. the tops of these mountains, and Befides, if there is an evident fimi- yet fo recently come down from larity between the two hemi- the lands that feemed to be effecfpheres, there are alfo differences tually defended from its attacks by between them, which will perhaps thofe tremendous bulwarks. It is, destroy that harmony we think we however, an undeniable fact, that both continents of the new hemisphere have been covered with the fea. The air and the land confirm this truth. obferve. When we confider the map of the world, and fee the local correspondence between the ifthmus of Suez and that of Panama, between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, between the Archipelago of the East-Indies and that of the Caribbee-Iflands, and between the mountains of Chili and thofe of Monomotapa, we are ftruck with the fimilarity of the feveral forms this picture prefents. Land feems on all fides to be oppofed to land, water to water, islands and peninfulas fcattered by the hand of nature to ferve as a counterpoife, and the fea by its fluctuation conftantly maintaining the balance of the whole. But if on the other hand we compare the great extent of the Pacific Ocean, which feparates the Eaft and Weft-Indies, with the fmall space the ocean occupies between the coast of Guinea and that of Brazil; the vast quantity of inhabited land to the North, with the The rivers, which in America are wider and of greater extent; the immenfe forefts to the fouth; the spacious lakes and vaft morasses to the north; the almoft eternal fnows between the tropics; few of thofe pure fands that feem to be the remains of an exhaufted ground; no men entirely black; very fair people under the line; a cool and mild air in the fame latitude as the fultry and uninhabitable parts of Africa; a frozen and fevere climate under the fame parallel as our temperate climates; and lafly, à difference of ten or twelve degrees, in the temperature of the old and new hemifpheres; these are fo many tokens of a world that is ftill in its infancy. Why should the continent of America be much warmer and much colder in proportion than that that of Europe, if it were not for the moisture the ocean has left behind, in quitting it long after our continent was peopled? Nothing but the fea can poffibly have pre. vented Mexico from being inhabited as early as Afia. If the waters that fill moiften the bowels of the earth in the new hemifphere had not covered its furface, the woods would very easily have been cut down, the fens drained, a foft and watery foil would have been made firm, by firring up, and expofing it to the rays of the fun, a free paffage would have been opened to the winds, and dikes raifed along the rivers: in short, the climate would have been totally altered by this time. But a rude and unpeopled hemifphere denotes a recent world; when the fea, about its coaft, fill flows obfcurely in its channels. A lefs fcorching fun, more plentiful rains, and thicker vapours more difpofed to ftagnate, are evident marks of the decay or the infancy of nature. The difference of climate, arifing from the waters having lain fo long on the ground in America, could not but have a great influence on men and animals. From this diverfity of caufes muft neceffarily arife a very great diverlity of effects. Accordingly we fee more fpecies of animals, by two thirds, in the old continent than in the new; animals of the fame kind confiderably larger; monfters that are become more favage and fierce, as the countries have become more inhabited. On the other hand, nature feems to have ftrangely negJected the new world. The men have lefs ftrength and lefs courage: no beard and no hair; they have lefs appearances of manhood; and are but little fufceptible of the lively and powerful fentiment of love, which is the principle of every attachment, the first instinct, the firft band of fociety, without which all other artificial ties have neither energy nor duration. The women, who are ftill more weak, are neither favourably treated by nature nor by the men, who have but little love for them, and confider them merely as fubfervient to their will: they rather facrifice them to their indolence, than confecrate them to their pleafures. This indolence is the great delight and fupreme felicity of the Americans, of which the women are the victims from the continual labours impofed upon them. It muft, however, be confeffed, that in America, as in all other parts, the men, when they have fentenced the women to work, have been fo equitable as to take upon themfelves the perils of war, together with the toils of hunting and fishing. But their indifference for the fex, which nature has intrufted with the care of multiplying the species, implies an imperfection in their organs, a fort of flate of childhood in the people of America, fimilar to that of the people in our continent who are not yet arrived to the age of puberty. This feems to be a natural defect prevailing in the continent of America, which is an indication of its being a new country. But if the Americans are a new people, are they a race of men originally distinct from those who cover the face of the old world? This is a question which ought not to be too hastily decided. The origin of the population of America is involved in inextricable difficulties. If we affert that the Greenlanders firft came from Nor way, way, and then went over to the coast of Labrador; others will tell us it is more natural to fuppofe that the Greenlanders are fprung from the Efquimaux, to whom they bear a greater refemblance than to the Europeans. If we fhould fuppofe that California was peopled from Kamtíchatka, it may be asked what motive or what chance could have led the Tartars to the northweft of America. Yet it is imagined to be from Greenland or Kamtfchatka that the inhabitants of the old world must have gone over to the new, as it is by thofe two countries that the two continents are connected, or at least approach nearest to one another. Befides, how can we conceive that in America the torrid zone have been peopled from one of the frozen zones? Population will indeed spread from north to fouth, but it must naturally have begun under the equator, where life is cherished by warmth. If the people of America could not come from our continent, and yet appear to be a new race, we must have recourfe to the flood, which is the fource and the folution of all difficulties in the history of nations. can Let us fuppofe that the fea having overflowed the other hemifphere, its old inhabitants took refuge upon the Apalachian mountains, and the Cordeleras, which are far higher than our mount Ararat. But how could they have lived upon thofe heights, covered with fnow and furrounded with waters ? How is it poffible that men who had breathed in a pure and delightful climate, could have furvived the miferies of want, the inclemency of a tainted atmosphere, and thofe numberless calamities, which must be the unavoidable con fequences of a deluge? How will the race have been preferved and propagated in thofe times of general calamity, and in the miferable ages that must have fucceeded? Notwithstanding all thefe objections, we must allow that America has been peopled from these wretched remains of the great devaftation. Every thing carries the veftiges of a malady, of which the human race fill feels the effects. The ruin of that world is ftill im. printed on its inhabitants. They are a fpecies of men degraded and degenerated in their natural conftitution, in their ftature, in their way of life, and in their underftanding, which is but little advanced in all the arts of civilization. A damper air, and a more marshy ground, muft neceffarily have infected the first principles of the fubfiftence and increase of mankind. It must have required fome ages to restore population, and still a greater number before the ground could be fettled and dried, fo as to be fit for tillage, and for the foundation of buildings. The air muft neceffarily be purified, before the fky could be clear, and the sky muft neceffarily be clear before the earth could be rendered habitable. The imperfection therefore of nature in America is not fo much a proof of its recent origin, as of its regeneration. It was probably peopled at the fame time as the other hemifphere, but may have been overflown later. The large foffil bones that are found under ground in America, fhew that it had formerly elephants, rhinoceros, and other enormous quadrupeds, which have fince disappeared in thofe regions. The gold and filver mines that are found just below the furface, are figns of a very ancient revolution revolution of the globe, but later than thofe that have overturned our hemisphere. Suppofe America had, hy fome means or other, been repeopled by our roving hords, that period would have been fo remote, that it would ftill give great antiquity to the inhabitants of that hemifphere. Three or four centuries will not then be fufficient to allow for the foundation of the empires of Mexico and Peru; for though we find no trace in thefe countries of our arts, or of the opinions and cuftoms that prevail in other parts of the globe, yet we have found a police and a fociety established, inventions and practices which, though they did not fhew any marks of times anterior to the deluge, yet they implied a long feries of ages fubfequent to this catastrophe. For, though in Mexico, as in Egypt, a country furrounded with waters, mountains, and other invincible obstacles, muft have forced the men inclofed in it to unite after a time, though they might at first deftroy each other in continual and bloody wars; yet it was only in procefs of time that they could invent and establish a worship and a legislation, which they 'could not, poffibly, have borrowed from remote times or countries. It required a greater numher of ages to render familiar the fingle art of fpeech, and that of writing, though but in hieroglyphics, to a whole nation unconnected with any other, and which mult itfelf have created both thofe arts, than it would take up days to perfect a child in them. Ages bear not the fame proportion, to the whole race as years do to individuals. The whole race is to occupy a vast field, both as to pace IT having been fuggested, in a converfation at which I was prefent, that the ice of fea-water is not fresh; and that if the ice found near the poles be really fo, it must probably be the ice of fresh water discharged into the fea from large rivers in thofe parts: I thought the prefent cold weather afforded an opportunity too favourable to be loft, of afcertaining by experiment, whether the water obtained from the melted ice of feawater be free from the taste of fait or not; of comparing its gravity with that of the fea-water, &c.; and and of finding the degree of cold in which the latter begins to freeze: and I beg leave to lay before you an account of my researches in thefe matters, and of the methods I followed in making them. If you, Sir, fhould think them worthy of notice, and would communicate them to the learned body over which you prefide, you would confer an honour on, &c. THE fea-water ufed in the following experiments was furnished by Mr. Owen, who keeps the Mineral Water Warehouse, at Temple-Bar; who affured me, that it was taken up off the North Foreland. On the 27th of January, 1766, at ten o'clock in the evening, I filled a jar 3 inches in diameter and 6 inches deep, with fea-wa ter, and expofed it to the open air, the thermometer ftanding at 15°. At noon the next day, on taking it in, I found it frozen very hard, except a very little at the bottom, which remained quite fluid: I now fet it by a ftove in a heat of 56° to thaw. The ice when taken in from the open air was one quarter of an inch above the edge of the jar. When the jar had continued in the degree of heat abovementioned during eight hours, I took out the ice, which was then 3 in ches long and two inches in diameter; about two thirds of the water appeared to remain. In order to clear the ice from any brine that might adhere to it, I washed it in a pail of pump-water, in which it was fuffered to remain about a quarter of an hour, and then fet it in a fieve to drain off the water in which it had been washed. On the 29th of January, 1776, I fet the beforementioned ice in a bafin in a heat of about 46°, in which it continued nine hours be. fore the whole was diffolved. The bulb of a thermometer rested on the ice during the time of the folution, and continued without variation at 32°. The water thus obtained, was, to my palate, per fely free from any tafte of falt. In order to afcertain the comparative gravity of this water, I filled a bottle with it to a certain mark in its neck, which was very narrow, and weighed the bottle fo filled very carefully. I weighed the fame bottle, filled to the fame mark in its neck with fea-water and other waters fucceffively, which were all brought to the fame degree of heat by a thermometer. The refults were as follow: viz. Water obtained from the melted ice of the feawater, fea-} Grains. 1614 To find the degree of cold in which fea-water begins to freeze, I made the following experiments, I expofed to the open air a decanter filled with the fea-water, in which a thermometer was fufpended, the bulb of which reached to the middle of the widest part of the decanter; a jelly glafs filled with the fame fea-water, in which alfo a thermometer was put, refting on the bottom, was placed in the fame expofure. The reful: will be feen in the following table: January |