2. The argument from geographical distribution would hardly seem valid, as it is known that the ocean can be and has been navigated by frail crafts. Lieutenant Bligh, of the ship Bounty, in a small boat, twenty-three feet long from stem to stern, deep laden with nineteen men and one hundred and fifty pounds of bread, twenty-eight gallons of water, twenty pounds of pork, etc., started from the island of Tofoa (South Pacific) for the island of Timor, a distance of three thousand six hundred miles. In this voyage he encountered a boisterous sea, and great perils, but finally reached his destination.[117] When men began to dwell on the sea-coast they made their small vessels and carried on a limited navigation. Many a frail craft has been driven out to sea with its human freight, some of which landed on uninhabited islands. This has often happened among the South Sea islanders.[118] If it had been asserted, a few years ago, that man's distribution might have been partly caused by the agency of ice, it would have received no attention. And yet, Captain Tyson and his party, consisting of twelve men, two women, and five children, being a portion of the crew of the ill-fated Polaris, drifted about from the 15th of October, 1872, to the 30th of April, 1873, on an ice-floe, and in the midst of an arctic winter. Besides the provisions saved from the Polaris they subsisted on the flesh of seals, birds, and bears that they were able to kill. Every member of this party was rescued off the coast of Labrador. It must be further noticed that the surface of the earth was not always the same. The continents have changed more or less, and during these changes man must have become more or less separated. 3. In respect to the disparity it may be replied that the two extreme points are observable in all the nations of the earth. Even in single families there have been those who were highly cultured and refined, while other members have been very low in organization, habits, and tastes. In these days it is manifest that all the races are capable of a very high degree of improvement. On the other hand, nations have retrograded. The ignorant, wretched nomads who pitch their tents amid the ruins of Babylon, are the descendants of the ancient mixed races who successively occupied Mesopotamia: the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, and Persians, who were ruled by such renowned monarchs as Shalmaneser, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, and others. The wild marauding Arabs are the descendants of a people who invented algebra and introduced the numerals. So the list might be extended.