England invariably negatived those laws, and
ultimately Oglethorpe was dismissed from office, for
persevering in the endeavor to accomplish so desirable an
object. It is an historical fact that slaves were not permitted
to be taken into Georgia, for some time after a colony was
established there.

[3] INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER II.

When America was first visited by Europeans, it was found that its
inhabitants were altogether ignorant of the country from which their
ancestors had migrated, and of the period at which they had been
transplanted to the new world. And although there were among them
traditions seeming to cast a light upon these subjects, yet when
thoroughly investigated, they tended rather to bewilder than lead to
any certain conclusion. The origin of the natives has ever since been
a matter of curious speculation with the learned; conjecture has
succeeded conjecture, hypothesis has yielded to hypothesis, as wave
recedes before wave, still it remains involved in a labyrinth of
inexplicable difficulties, from which the most ingenious mind will
perhaps never be able to free it.

In this respect the situation of the aborigines of America does not
differ from that of the inhabitants of other portions of the globe. An
impenetrable cloud hangs over the early history of other nations, and
defies the researches of the learned in any attempt to trace them to
their origin. The attempt has nevertheless been repeatedly made; and
philosophers, arguing from a real or supposed conformity of one people
to another, have vainly imagined that they had attained to certainty
on these subjects. And while one has in this manner, undertaken to
prove China to have been an Egyptian colony, another, pursuing the
same course of reasoning, has, by way of ridicule, shewn how easily a
learned man of Tobolski or Pekin might as satisfactorily prove France
to have been a Trojan, a Greek or even an Arabian colony; thus making
manifest the utter futility of endeavoring to arrive at certainty in
this way.[1]

[13] Nor is this to be at all wondered at, when we reflect on the
barbarous state of those nations in their infancy, the imperfection
of traditionary accounts of what had transpired centuries before, and
in many instances the entire absence of a written language, by
which, either to perpetuate events, or enable the philosopher by
analogy of language to ascertain their affinity with other natio