They who study the philosophy of history, of which men talk so much, and know so little; they who seek in the general laws of nature and the physical economy of the globe an explanation of its ethnological phenomena, may find, it seems to me, a curious subject for investigation in the singular destiny of the New World. They will have to ascertain by what concurrence of circumstances the two Americas, separated from us by an immensity of waters, and revealed to the world of the East but some four centuries ago, shall have traversed in so brief a period the successive phases of conquest, colonization, and emancipation; why European emigration was directed thitherward at the very beginning; and thitherward continues still to flow from every quarter; finally, by what tacit and unanimous agreement this New World has become the adopted country of all the proscribed and disinherited of the Old; while almost the entire area of the African continent, which is so much more readily accessible, is scarcely less favoured in its climatic conditions, and upon which the white race has rested, from the remotest antiquity, its political institutions, its arts, and its industry, has remained uninfluenced by the advancing tide of civilization. [Illustration: PRAIRIES OF NORTH AMERICA--STAMPEDO OF WILD BISONS.] I limit myself to indicating this problem, which, however, it is not within my present province to examine, but which naturally suggests itself when we think of the swift development undergone by the European societies planted on the American continent--when we remember how rapidly they are narrowing the area of the desert and the wilderness. At the epoch of the discovery of the New World it was one vast desolation, with the exception of Mexico and Peru; and these were but the seats of a civilization which seemed to have passed without transition from infancy to old age, from vigour to decrepitude, and which crumbled into dust under the pitiless blows of the Spanish conquerors. Neither Cortez nor Pizarro would have overthrown a great empire with a handful of foot-soldiers and men-at-arms, a squadron or two of horse, and a few unwieldy guns, had not the Colossus already nodded to its fall, had not the Column been hollow at the base. But soon the European nations shared among themselves this immense country and the neighbouring islands. The Slave race, whose destiny it seemed to be to reign among the polar ice and snow, long contented itself with the inclement and inhospitable region of the extreme north-west, which it has but recently surrendered to the United States Government. The Anglo-Saxon race, in the northern continent, has seized the lion's share. It now holds between the two oceans, from the fifty-fifth to the thirtieth parallels of north latitude, a fertile and life-breathing territory, well fitted to be the cradle of great empires; the flourishing Confederation of Canada, the colony of British Columbia, and the mighty republic of the United