Page 149 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

ANNUAL ADDRESS. 145

particularly to islands in the warmer latitudes of tho Pacific;
but by similar means the Aleutian chain, partly by accident and
partly by-design, would inevitably be reached, one after another,
by people from the north-east of Asia, till the whole chain would
be traversed and the continent at length reached. Thus the
Aleutian chain may have furnished numerous centres of popu-
lation on the continent-not imntediately Asiatic, but of Asiatic
origin, and having become thoroughly savage in the long period
of many geizerations required for their dispersion through the
whole chain to the American coast, and the winds and currents
fdrbidding all return, by any process known to them, it is not
strange that tlie existence of this continent should have re-
mained unknown to the civilized countries of Asia, from which
they may have originated.
Another ilatural channel of migration from the rude tribes of
the extreme north east of Asia, is Behrings's Straits. Some
writers hnve regarded this as the point from which the entire
American population was derived, and have looked no further.
That it was one of the routes by which the Indian fathers
reached the continent, there can no longer exist a reasonable
doubt. Lieut. MAURY, in the letter before quoted, says:
"Capt. Ray, of the whale ship Superior, fished two years ago
(1848) in Behring's Straits, and saw canoes going from one con-
tinent to the other."
If this was done in 1848, it may have been done in 148 as
well. But it would not naturally take piace until population
had been pushed to the extreme north-east of Asia. Migration
by this route was, most probably, first by accident, and after-
wards by design; and yet, the barbarous people, having no con-
ceptions of the nature of their discovery, or that they had dis-
covered a new continent at all, the knowledge of it would not
be likely to find its way back through the intervening barbarous
hordes, to the civilized portions of Asia. But to conclude that
this is the only route by which Asiatics could have reached the
continent, would be as unphilosophical as it is inconsistent with
well known facts. It was doubtless one, and only one, of seve-
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