According to Cumberland, this family increased to three thousand three hundred and thirty millions, in three hundred and forty years; and according to Whiston, about three hundred years after the Deluge, they amounted only to sixty-five millions four hundred and thirty-six.
It is difficult to reconcile and to estimate these accounts, such is the extravagance when people seek to make things accord which are repugnant, and to explain what is inexplicable. This unhappy endeavor has deranged heads which in other pursuits might have made discoveries beneficial to society.
The authors of the English "Universal History" observe, it is generally agreed that the present inhabitants of the earth amount to about four thousand millions. It is to be remarked, that these gentlemen do not include in this number the natives of America, which comprehends nearly half of the globe. For my own part, if, instead of a common romance, I wished to amuse myself by reckoning up the number of brethren I have on this unhappy little planet, I would proceed as follows: I would first endeavor to estimate pretty nearly the number of inhabited square leagues this earth contains on its surface; I should then say: The surface of the globe contains twenty-seven millions of square leagues; take away two-thirds at least for seas, rivers, lakes, deserts, mountains, and all that is uninhabited; this calculation, which is very moderate, leaves us nine millions of square leagues to account for.
In France and Germany, there are said to be six hundred persons to a square league; in Spain, one hundred and fifty; in Russia, fifteen; and Tartary, ten. Take the mean number at a hundred, and you will have about nine hundred millions of brethren, including mulattoes, negroes, the brown, the copper-colored, the fair, the bearded, and the unbearded. It is not thought, indeed, that the number is so great as this; and if eunuchs continue to be made, monks to multiply, and wars to be waged on the most trifling pretexts, it is easy to perceive that we shall not very soon be able to muster the four thousand millions, with which the English authors of the "Universal History" have so liberally favored us; but, then, of what consequence is it, whether the number of men on the earth be great or small? The chief thing is to discover the means of rendering our miserable species as little unhappy as possible.
SECTION IV.
Of The Population Of America.
The discovery of America—that field of so much avarice and so much ambition—has also become an object of philosophical curiosity. A great number of writers have endeavored to prove that America was a colony of the ancient world. Some modest mathematicians, on the contrary, have said, that the same power which has caused the grass to grow in American soil, was able to place man there; but this simple and naked system has not been attended to.
When the great Columbus suspected the existence of this new world, it was held to be impossible; and Columbus was taken for a visionary. When it was really discovered, it was then found out that it had been known long before.
It was pretended that Martin Behem, a native of Nuremberg, quitted Flanders about the year 1460, in search of this unknown world; that he made his way even to the Straits of Magellan, of which he left unknown charts. As, however, it is certain that Martin Behem did not people America, it must certainly have been one of the later grandchildren of Noah, who took this trouble. All antiquity is then ransacked for accounts of long voyages, to which they apply the discovery of this fourth quarter of the globe. They make the ships of Solomon proceed to Mexico, and it is thence that he drew the gold of Ophir, to procure which he borrowed them from King Hiram. They find out America in Plato, give the honor of it to the Carthaginians, and quote this anecdote from a book of Aristotle which he never wrote.
Hornius pretends to discover some conformity between the Hebrew language and that of the Caribs. Father Lafiteau, the Jesuit, has not failed to follow up so fine an opening. The Mexicans, when greatly afflicted, tore their garments; certain people of Asia formerly did the same, and of course they are the ancestors of the Mexicans. It might be added, that the natives of Languedoc are very fond of dancing; and that, as in their rejoicings the Hurons dance also, the Languedocians are descended from the Hurons, or the Hurons from the Languedocians.