NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.              85

Cloyne, from Italy to America in 1728, was employed by
the Grand Duke of Tuscany, while at Florence, to paint
two or three Siberian Tartars, presented to the Duke by
the Czar of Russia. This Mr. Smibert, upon his landing
at Narraganeet Bay with Dr. Berkeley, instantly recogni-
zed the Indians here tobe the same people as the Siberian
Tartars whose pictures he had& taken.*
  The learned traveller Mr. John Bell of Antermony makes
the following observation. " From all the accounts I have
heard and read of the natives of Canada, there is no nation
in the world which they so much resemble as the Tongu-
ians. The distance between them is not so great as is
commonly imagined."
  Great question, says Mr. Jefferson, has arisen xvhenee
came those aboriginal inhabitants of America. Discover-
ies, long ago made, were sufficient to show that a passage
from Europe to America was always practicable, even to
the imperfect navigation of ancient times. In going from
Norway to Iceland from Iceland to Greenland, from Green-
land to Labrador, the first traject is the widest; and this
having been practised from the earliest times of which we
have any account of that part of the earth, it is not difficult
to suppose that the subsequent trajects may have been
sometimes passed. Again the late discoveries by Captain
Cook, coasting from Kamskatka. to California, have proved
that, if the two continents of Asia and America be separa-
ted at all, it is only by a narrow strait. So that from this
side also, inhabitants may have passed into America; and
the resemblance between the Indians of America and the
eastern inhabitants of Asia, would induce us to conjecture,
that the former are the descendants of the latter, or the lat-
ter of the former ; excepting indeed the Esquimeaux, who,
from the same circumstance of resemblance, and from the


   The United States elevated to glory and honor* A sermon
preached before his excellency Jonathan Trumbull Esq. L. L
D. &c. &c. By Ezra Stiles 1). D. L. L. D., president of Yale
College, p. 16. and 17.
                          8*