been joined in the extreme north, so as to have afforded an easy communication.* Others, embarrassed by the difficulty of transporting inhabitants of the tropics across the Arctic regions, revived the old story of Plato's Atlantis, that huge island, now submerged, which might have stretched from the shores of Africa to the eastern borders of the new continent; while they saw vestiges of a similar convulsion of nature in the green islands sprinkled over the Pacific, once the mountain-summits of a vast continent now buried beneath the waters. Some, distrusting the existence of revolutions, of which no record was preserved, supposed that animals might have found their way across the ocean by various means; the birds of stronger wing by flight over the narrowest spaces; while the tamer kinds of quadrupeds, might easily have been transported by men in boats, and even the more ferocious, as tigers, bears, and the like, have been brought over in the same manner, when young, "for amusement and the pleasure of the chase!" Others, again, maintained the equally probable opinion, that angels, who had, doubtless, taken charge of them in the ark, had also superintended their distribution afterwards over the different parts of the globe. § Such were the extremities to which even thinking minds were reduced, in their eagerness to reconcile the literal interpretation of Scripture with the phenomena of nature! The philosophy of a later day conceives that it is no departure from this sacred authority to follow the suggestions of science, by referring the new tribes of animals to a creation, since the deluge, in those places * Acosta, lib. 1, cap. 16. Count Carli shows much ingenuity and learning in support of the famous Egyptian tradition, recorded by Plato, in his "Timæus,"—of the good faith of which the Italian philosopher nothing doubts.-Lettres Améric., tom. ii. let. 36-39. сар. 4. Garcia, Orígen de los Indios de el Nuevo Mundo, (Madrid, 1729,) § Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 1, cap. 8. which they were clearly intended by constitution and ts.* an would not seem to present the same embarrassments he discussion as the inferior orders. He is fitted by re for every climate, the burning sun of the tropics the icy atmosphere of the north. He wanders indiffer over the sands of the desert, the waste of polar snows, the pathless ocean. Neither mountains nor seas idate him, and, by the aid of mechanical contrivances, complishes journeys which birds of boldest wing would h in attempting. Without ascending to the high ern latitudes, where the continents of Asia and America ach within fifty miles of each other, it would be easy ne inhabitant of eastern Tartary or Japan to steer his from islet to islet, quite across to the American shore, ut ever being on the ocean more than two days at a The communication is somewhat more difficult on tlantic side. But even there, Iceland was occupied onies of Europeans many hundred years before the ery by Columbus; and the transit from Iceland to ca is comparatively easy. Independently of these tchard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, (London, vol. i. p. 81, et seq. He may find an orthodox authority of ree antiquity, for a similar hypothesis, in St. Augustine, who plainly s his belief, that, "as by God's command, at the time of the creation, h brought forth the living creature after his kind, so a similar must have taken place after the deluge, in islands too remote to be by animals from the continent."-De Civitate Dei, ap. Opera, 1636,) tom. v. p. 987. echey, Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's Strait, (London, 1831,) Appendix.-Humboldt, Examen Critique de l'Histoire de la ie du Nouveau Continent, (Paris, 1837,) tom. ii. p. 58. atever scepticism may have been entertained as to the visit of the n, in the eleventh century, to the coasts of the great continent, it ly set at rest in the minds of most scholars, since the publication * channels, others were opened in the southern hemisphere, by means of the numerous islands in the Pacific. The population of America is not nearly so difficult a problem as that of these little spots. But experience shows how practicable the communication may have been, even with such sequestered places. The savage has been picked up in his canoe, after drifting hundreds of leagues on the open ocean, and sustaining life for months, by the rain from heaven, and such fish as he could catch. The instances are not very rare; and it would be strange if these wandering barks should not sometimes have been intercepted by the great continent, which stretches across the globe, in unbroken continuity, almost from pole to pole. No doubt, history could reveal to us more than one example of men, who, thus driven upon the American shores, have mingled their blood with that of the primitive races who occupied them. The real difficulty is not, as with the inferior animals, to explain how man could have reached America, but from particular, Antiquitates Americanæ, Hafniæ, 1837, pp. 79-200.) How far south they penetrated is not so easily settled. * The most remarkable example, probably, of a direct intercourse between remote points, is furnished us by Captain Cook, who found the inhabitants of New Zealand not only with the same religion, but speaking the same language, as the people of Otaheite, distant more than 2,000 miles. The comparison of the two vocabularies establishes the fact. Cook's Voyages (Dublin, 1784,) vol. i. book 1, chap. 8. The eloquent Lyell closes an enumeration of some extraordinary and well-attested instances of this kind with remarking, "Were the whole of mankind now cut off, with the exception of one family, inhabiting the old or new continent, or Australia, or even some coral islet of the Pacific, we should expect their descendants, though they should never become more enlightened than the South-Sea Islanders or the Esquimaux, to spread, in the course of ages, over the whole earth, diffused partly by the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence in a limited district, and partly by the accidental drifting of canoes by tides and currents to distant shores."-Principles of Geology, (London, 1832,) vol. ii. p. 121. what quarter he actually has reached it. In surveying the whole extent of the New World, it was found to contain two great families, one in the lowest stage of civilisation, composed of hunters, and another nearly as far advanced in refinement as the semi-civilised empires of Asia. The more polished races were probably unacquainted with the existence of each other, on the different continents of America, and had as little intercourse with the barbarian tribes by whom they were surrounded. Yet they had some things in common both with these last and with one another, which remarkably distinguished them from the inhabitants of the Old World. They had a common complexion and physical organisation, at least, bearing a more uniform character than is found among the nations of any other quarter of the globe. They had some usages and institutions in common, and spoke languages of similar construction, curiously distinguished from those in the eastern hemisphere. Whence did the refinement of these more polished races come? Was it only a higher development of the same Indian character, which we see, in the more northern latitudes, defying every attempt at permanent civilisation? Was it engrafted on a race of higher order in the scale originally, but self-instructed, working its way upward by its own powers? Was it, in short, an indigenous civilisation? or was it borrowed in some degree from the nations in the Eastern World? If indigenous, how are we to explain the singular coincidence with the East in institutions and opinions? If Oriental, how shall we account for the great dissimilarity in language, and for the ignorance of some of the most simple and useful arts, which, once known, it would seem scarcely possible should have been forgotten? This is the riddle of the Sphinx, which no Edipus has yet had the ingenuity to solve. It is, however, a question of deep interest to every curious and intelligent observer of his species. And it has accordingly occupied the thoughts of men, from the first discovery of the country to the present time; when the extraordinary monuments brought to light in Central America have given a new impulse to inquiry, by suggesting the probability, the possibility, rather, that surer evidences than any hitherto known might be afforded for establishing the fact of a positive communication with the other hemisphere. It is not my intention to add many pages to the volumes already written on this inexhaustible topic. The subject— as remarked by a writer, of a philosophical mind himself, and one who has done more than any other for the solution of the mystery-is of too speculative a nature for history, almost for philosophy.* But this work would be incomplete, without affording the reader the means of judging for himself as to the true sources of the peculiar civilisation already described, by exhibiting to him the alleged points of resemblance with the ancient continent. In doing this, I shall confine myself to my proper subject, the Mexicans, or to what, in some way or other, may have a bearing on this subject; proposing to state only real points of resemblance, as they are supported by evidence, and stripped, as far as possible, of the illusions with which they have been invested by the pious credulity of one party, and the visionary system-building of another. An obvious analogy is found in cosmogonal traditions, and religious usages. The reader has already been made acquainted with the Aztec system of four great cycles, at the end of each of which the world was destroyed, to be again regenerated. The belief in these periodical con "La question générale de la première origine des habitans d'un continent est au-delà des limites prescrites à l'histoire; peut-être même n'est elle pas une question philosophique."-Humboldt, Essai Politique, tom. i. p. 349. +Ante, vol. i. P. 51. |