half-way between the
actual continents of Asia, Australia and America. A mere glance is
sufficient to see how well Australia fits in along the Chilian and
Peruvian coast, the great island of New Guinea along part of Peru and
Ecuador, and the west coast of the Central American Isthmus. The
Philippine Islands lay probably in those days alongside of Guatemala,
while California bordered on Japan.

Such immense rivers as the Amazon, and its portentous tributaries flowing
from south to north, were also formed perhaps at that time, great
fissures caused by the sudden splitting and cooling of the earth's crust
becoming the river beds. So perhaps was formed the giant canon of
Colorado and the immense fissures in the earth's crust that occur in
Central Asia, in Central Africa, and, as we shall see, on the central
plateau of Brazil.

Undoubtedly the Antarctic continent was once joined to South America,
Australia and Africa. During the last Antarctic expeditions it has been
shown that the same geological formation exists in South America as in
the Antarctic plateau. On perusing this book, the reader will be struck
by the wonderful resemblance between the Indians of South America, the
Malay races of Asia, and the tribes of Polynesia. I maintain that they
not only resemble each other, but are actually the same people in
different stages of development, and naturally influenced to a certain
extent by climatic and other local conditions. Those people did not come
there, as has been supposed, by marching up the entire Asiatic coast,
crossing over the Behring Straits and then down the American coast, nor
by means of any other migration. No, indeed; it is not they who have
moved, but it is the country under them which has shifted and separated
them, leaving members of the same race thousands of miles apart.

I was able to notice among the Indians of Central Brazil many words of
Malay origin, others closely resembling words of languages current among
tribes of the Philippine Islands. The anthropometric measurements which I
took of South American Indians corresponded almost exactly with those of
natives of the Sulu Archipelago and the island of Mindanao.

I hope some day to use the wealth of material I have collected among
innumerable tribes on the Asiatic coast, on the islands of the Pacific
Ocean, in South America and in Africa, in making a comparative study of
those peoples. It should prove interesting enough. I have no space here
t