But, by whatever means we seek to account for the great diversity of speech among the communities of the New World, it is manifest that language furnishes no evidence of recent intrusion, or of contact for many generations with Asiatic or other races. On any theory of origin either of race or language, a greatly prolonged period is indispensable to account for the actual condition of things which presents such a tempting field for the study of the ethnologist. Among the various races brought under notice, the Huron-Iroquois of Canada and the neighbouring states most fitly represent the North American race east of the Rocky Mountains. Their language, subdivided into many dialects, furnishes indications of migrations throughout the greater portion of that area eastward between the Mississippi and the Atlantic seaboard, and its affinities have been sought for beyond the American continent. Mr. Horatio Hale, an experienced philologist familiar with the races and languages most nearly akin to those of the New World, in his _Indian Migrations, as evidenced by Language_, after remarking that there is nothing in the languages of the American Indians to favour the conjecture of an origin from Eastern Asia, thus proceeds: “But in Western Europe one community is known to exist, speaking a language which in its general structure manifests a near likeness to the Indian tongues. Alone of all the races of the old continent the Basques or Euskarians, of northern Spain and south-western France, have a speech of that highly complex and polysynthetic character which distinguishes the American languages.” But to this he has to add the statement that “there is not, indeed, any such positive similarity in words or grammar as would prove a direct affiliation. The likeness is merely in the general cast and mould of speech, but this likeness is so marked as to have awakened much attention.”[41]