Some have started on the road to improvement. In more than one place we come upon an attenuated kind of culture, a rudimentary attempt to extract the minerals. The traveller may still, to his surprise, find a few useful arts being practised with a certain ingenuity. But all these efforts are very humble and uncoordinated; they are certainly not the beginnings of any definite civilization. In the vast territory between Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico, the River Missouri and the Rocky Mountains,[24] there certainly existed, in remote ages, a nation which has left remarkable traces of its presence. The remains of buildings, the inscriptions engraved on rocks, the tumuli,[25] the mummies, show that it had reached an advanced state of mental culture. But there is nothing to prove a very close kinship between this mysterious people and the tribes that now wander over its tombs. Suppose, if you will, that there was some relation between them, whether by way of blood or of slavery, and that thus the natives of to-day did learn from the ancient lords of the country, the first rudiments of the arts they practise so imperfectly; this only makes us wonder the more that they should have found it impossible to carry any further what they had been taught. In fact, this would supply one more reason for my belief that not every people would be capable of civilization, even if it chose the most favoured spot on earth as its settlement. Indeed, civilization is quite independent of climate and soil, and their adaptability to man’s wants. India and Egypt are both countries which have had to be artificially fertilized;[26] yet they are famous centres of human culture and development. In China, certain regions are naturally fertile; but others have needed great labour to fit them for cultivation. Chinese history begins with the conquest of the rivers. The first benefits conferred by the ancient Emperors were the opening of canals and the draining of marshes. In the country between the Euphrates and the Tigris, that beheld the splendour of the first Assyrian empire, and is the majestic scene of our most sacred recollections—in this region, where wheat is said to grow of its own accord,[27] the soil is naturally so unproductive that vast works of irrigation, carried out in the teeth of every difficulty, have been needed to make it a fit abode for man. Now that the canals are destroyed or filled up, sterility has resumed its ancient reign. I am therefore inclined to believe that nature did not favour these regions as much as we are apt to think. But I will not discuss the point. I will grant, if you like, that China, Egypt, India, and Assyria, contained all the conditions of prosperity, and were eminently suited for the founding of powerful empires and the development of great civilizations. But, we must also admit, these conditions were of such a kind that, in order to receive any benefit from them the inhabitants must have reached beforehand, by other means,