Others have supposed that the Afghans are the descendants of the lost tribes, on account of some similarity between their manners and customs, but this may easily arise from association as, well as from descent. One of the missionaries at the East, by the name of Grant, a few years since, published a work, in which he endeavored to show that the Nestorian Christians were the lost tribes; it failed, however, to produce conviction in the minds of its readers. A distinguished citizen of this country, Elias Boudinot, about forty years ago, published a work, entitled "Star in the West" in which he attempted to show that the American Indians were a portion of the lost tribes, from resemblances between their religious customs and those of the Israelites; and a Congregational minister of Vermont, by the name of Smith, published, not long afterward, a work, entitled "View of the Hebrews," in which he advocated the same theory. Later than this, a converted Jew, by the name of Simon, undertook to identify the ancient South American races, Mexicans, Peruvians, and others, as descendants of ancient Israel, from similarity of language, and civil and religious customs. All these authors have taken, as their starting point, the resolution which, Esdras informs us, the ten tribes took after being first placed in the cities of the Medes, viz., that they would leave the multitude of heathen and go into a land wherein never mankind dwelt, that they might there keep their laws, which God gave them, and that, in pursuance of this resolution, they continued in a north-easterly direction, until they came to the Behring Straits, which they crossed, and set foot on this continent, spreading over it from north to south, until, at the discovery of it by Columbus, they had peopled it in every part.

It must be admitted, in justice to the learning and labors of these last mentioned authors, that they have made out an exceedingly plausible case, and have, at least, shown that if the aborigines of this country are not descendants of the ten tribes, they have had some knowledge of the religious customs of the ancient Israelites before their migration to this continent, which is very probably the case, and will account for their belief in a great Spirit, whom they called Y-o-he-wah, the Jehovah of Scriptures, and the use of the word Alleluia in their religious songs, which is a peculiarly Jewish word, besides many festivals corresponding to those of the Mosaic law. Ethnologists, however, who have paid most attention to the characteristics of the different races of mankind, maintain that the aborigines of this land are of Tartar descent, that they bear a closer resemblance to that people than to any other. Now, the region of country to which the ten tribes, in their journey of a. year and a half, from the Euphrates eastward, would arrive, would be somewhere adjoining Tartary, and intercourse between the two races would easily lead to the adoption of the religious ideas and customs of the one by the other. Besides, the Tartars boast of their descent from the Israelites, and the famous Tamerlane took pride in declaring that he was descended from the tribe of Dan, so that, by intermarriage, some of the Tartar tribes may have had the blood of Israel running in their veins, and have become, in some degree, proselytes to their faith, and this will readily explain the Tartar habits of the American Indians, together with their Jewish religious customs, without supposing them to be the lost tribes themselves.