The New York correspondent of the Standard telegraphs, on the
authority of the New York Herald, a statement which, if subsequently verified, is of unusual historic interest. Mr. Morris Jessup's expedition, he says, has returned from its explorations in the North Pacific, having travelled "from Mariinsk, the most northerly military post in Russia, through the mountainous interior of the Arctic regions, to Ustyansk, the northernmost inhabited point in Siberia." Parties of the expedition reached points never before visited by white men, and obtained much evidence of a connection between the inhabitants and the Japanese, and also—this is the interesting point—" found tribes whose language, legends, and customs resembled those of the North American Indians." The chiefs of the parties, Mr. Jochelson and Mr. Bogorras, seem to be men of some scientific standing, and if this account is well established, it will almost prove the hypothesis that the American Indians came from Asia, spread southward, and developed in the South civilisations of their own, being pos- sibly in the Peruvian case helped by Chinese accidentally thrown upon the coast. The process must have occupied ages, but of the substantial unity of all aboriginal Americans there is now, we believe, exceedingly hale doubt.
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