VIII. However this may be, the history of Scandinavian voyages is sufficient to explain the appearance of the white type, even of the fair type, in the midst of American populations. I do not hesitate to refer to this Aryan stock, the white Esquimaux of Charlevoix, the fair-haired men of Pierre Martyr, the fair men spoken of in some Mexican traditions, the White Savage Chief whom the Spaniards met with in their Cibola expedition ... etc. Besides, the discovery and the repeated invasions of the American coasts by the Scandinavians show the estimation in which we ought to hold the pretended impossibility of the peopling of America. Here, we have no longer the double _pirogues_ of the Polynesians, carrying 150 warriors; it was in _boats_ manned by thirty or forty men that Leif and Thorwald faced the Greenland seas, reached, and returned from Vinland. In the presence of such facts, can we regard our improved method of navigation as _indispensable_ to long sea voyages? Modern civilization has placed in our hands an immense power of action unknown to our ancestors. It enables us to accomplish works which they would have thought could only be expected from supernatural powers. Science has placed in our hands the magic ring, and we have become so used to employing it for the satisfaction of our smallest wants, that it seems to us impossible to do without it. We too often forget the resources which man possesses in himself, and which form part of his original nature. Thus, we regard less advanced, _less learned_ races as incapable of accomplishing that which we should not dare to undertake without the aid which we have been able to create for ourselves. We have just seen how fully the history of the Polynesians and Scandinavians contradicts these false ideas, and how they justify the words of Lyell:—“Supposing the human genus were to disappear entirely, with the exception of a single family, placed either upon the Ocean of the New Continent, in Australia, or upon some coral island of the Pacific Ocean, we may be sure that its descendants would, in the course of ages, succeed in invading the whole earth, although they might not have attained a higher degree of civilization than the Esquimaux or the South Sea Islanders.” BOOK VI. ACCLIMATISATION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. CHAPTER XIX. INFLUENCE OF CONDITIONS OF LIFE AND RACE. I. The human species, springing originally from a single centre of appearance, is now universally distributed. In their innumerable travels, its representatives have encountered the widest difference of climate and the most opposite conditions of life, and now inhabit both the polar and equatorial regions. It must, therefore, have possessed the necessary aptitudes for accommodating itself to all the natural conditions of existence; in other words, it must have had the power of becoming _acclimatised_ and _naturalised_ in every place where we meet with it.