Russia, while it is a well-known fact that the greatest architect in that country, the builder of the Cazan Church at St. Petersburgh, was taken from that abject class, and by education became what he is. In my opinion, teaching might again lift up the Indian, might impart to him the skill to sculpture stone and carve wood; and if restored to freedom, and the unshackled exercise of his powers of mind, there might again appear a capacity to originate and construct, equal to that exhibited in the ruined monuments of his ancestors. The last argument, and that upon which most stress has been laid, against the hypothesis that the cities were constructed by the ancestors of the present Indians, is the alleged absence of historical accounts in regard to the discovery or knowledge of such cities by the conquerors. But it is manifest that even if this allegation were true, the argument would be unsound, for it goes to deny that such cities ever existed at all. Now there can be no doubt as to the fact of their existence; and as it is never pretended that they were erected since the conquest, they must be allowed to have been standing at that time. Whether erected by the Indians or by races perished and unknown, whether desolate or inhabited, beyond all question the great buildings were there; if not entire, they must at least have been far more so than they are now; if desolate, perhaps more calculated to excite wonder than if inhabited; and in either case the alleged silence of the historian would be equally inexplicable.