IX. Finally, the facts to which I have been obliged to confine myself are entirely opposed to the theories of autochthonists, and lead to the following conclusions: Polynesia, a region which, from its geographical conditions, seems at first sight to be isolated from the rest of the world, has been peopled by means of voluntary migrations and accidental dispersion, passing from west to east, at least as a general rule. The Polynesians, coming from Malaya, and the Isle of Boeroe in particular, first established and settled themselves in the Archipelagos of Samoa and Tonga. Thence they invaded by degrees the maritime world open before them; they found, almost without an exception, that all the countries where they landed were uninhabited, and only on two or three occasions met with very small tribes of a more or less black type. CHAPTER XVIII. MIGRATIONS BY SEA.—MIGRATIONS IN AMERICA. I. The peopling of Polynesia and America is a problem which presents, if I may use the expression, inverse conditions. There is, in reality, no geographical difficulty in the latter. The proximity of the two continents at Behring Straits, the existence in this channel of the Saint Laurence islands, the largest of which is situated exactly half-way between the two opposite continents, the connection formed between Kamschatka and the peninsula of Alaska by the Aleutian Islands; the maritime habits of all these peoples; the presence of the Tchukchees on the two opposite shores; the voyages which they undertake from one continent to the other on simple matters of commerce, leave no doubt as to the facility with which the Asiatic races could pass into North America through the Polar Regions. More to the south, the current of Tessan, the _kouro-sivo_, or _black stream_ of the Japanese, opens a great route for navigators. This current has frequently cast floating bodies and abandoned junks upon the shores of California. Instances of this fact have been observed in our own time. It is impossible that they should not also have happened before the period of European discoveries. Asiatic maritime nations must at all times have been carried to America from all those places which are washed by the Black Stream. The Equatorial current of the Atlantic opens a similar route leading from Africa to America, and there are some evidences, rare it is true, showing that wrecks have been carried in this direction. It is possible, therefore, that the same may also have happened to man. II. We shall not, therefore, be surprised at finding in the New World representatives of races which seem to belong originally to the Old World; we shall easily understand the multiplicity of American races, which is perhaps still contested by some of Morton’s followers, but firmly established in the opinion of every unprejudiced person by the testimony of Humboldt and d’Orbigny’s classical work on _L’Homme Américain_.