In the second volume, published in 1848, he printed the result of his continued investigations on the subject which first interested him, as an introduction to a republication of a work by Mr.Hale on the "Indians of Northwest America." This consisted of geographical notices, an account of Indian means of subsistence, the ancient semi-civilization of the Northwest, Indian philology, and analogic comparisons with the Chinese and Polynesian languages.

These papers Mr.Gallatin modestly described to Chevalier as the 'fruits of his leisure,' and to Sismondi he wrote that he had not the requisite talent for success in literature or science.

They nevertheless entitle him to the honorable name of the Father of American Ethnography.
In 1837 Mr.Wheaton, the American minister at Berlin, requested Mr.
Gallatin to put the Baron von Humboldt in possession of authentic data concerning the production of gold in the United States.

Humboldt had visited the Oural and Siberian regions in 1829, at the request of the Emperor of Russia, to make investigations as to their production of the precious metals.

Mr.Gallatin was the only authority in the United States on the subject.