the natives by a powerful chief who happened to arrive just then for the purpose of making a conquest of the island, was received into his favor, knighted, and became the commander of his navy. Antonio having been sent for, the brothers engaged in various enterprises together, and founded a monastery and church in Greenland. Nicolo dies, but Antonio remains in the service of the chieftain, Earl Zichmni, fourteen years. At some time during this period he obtained, from a mariner who came to Friseland, the following statement: That twenty-six years before, the mariner was one of a party which was cast upon an island called Estotiland, a thousand miles distant, a populous and civilized country, there being Latin books in the King's library; that being sent by the King to visit a country to the south called Drogeo, they narrowly escaped being devoured by the inhabitants, who were cannibals; but learned that far to the southwest was a more civilized region and temperate climate, where the people had a knowledge of gold and silver, erected splendid temples to idols, and sacrificed human victims; and that after a long time, having acquired wealth in Estotiland, the mariner fitted out a bark of his own and made his way back to Friseland.

Stimulated by this story Earl Zichmni sent Antonio in search of the countries described. The mariner died before Antonio sailed; but some of his companions from Estotiland were taken as guides. The voyage proved unsuccessful; and there the matter appears to have ended.

These particulars are said to be derived from the letters of the Zeni to their friends in Venice. They were first published in 1558, by a descendant of the family who represented that, when a child, he had mutilated the manuscript, not knowing its value, but afterwards collected the fragments and disposed them in the best possible order. Some able writers and candid judges have considered the account as authentic and credible. It was rather difficult to find a locality for Friseland, which was described as larger than Ireland; but the name was decided to be a corruption of Ferrisland, or Faro Islands. Zichmni was supposed to be a Scottish chieftain named Sinclair, known as the Earl of the Orkneys. In construing the tale of the mariner, Estotiland is determined by Malte Brun, to be Newfoundland, Drogeo the country intermediate between that and Florida; while Mexico is considered as the civilized region spoken of as lying far to the southwest.1

To this list of sources from whence the ante-Columbian population of America may have been derived, should be added the supposition that the fleet of Kublai Khan, first emperor of the Moguls, which, being sent to conquer Japan, disappeared in a storm, about A. D. 1294, may have been driven to this continent. It has been remarked that the two empires of Mexico and Peru, about that time, sprang up in the midst of savage and rude nations; a circumstance which has been thought to favor the supposition that the founders of those empires came to their respective localities by sea, and may have belonged to the missing ships.2

1 For a favorable view of the narrative of the Zeni, see an article in the North American Review, for July, 1838, written by Hon. George Folsom.

2 Foster's Hist. of Voyages and Discoveries in the North, p. 43. n.

It remains to mention, with great brevity, the manner in which the various hints from history have been used in accounting for the population of the new world. Many writers upon this subject, particularly those of ancient date, refer to numerous authors, whose works, however famous in their time, are now seldom perused, and whose names, to most persons, will convey no definite idea of the value of their opinions. Among those who were supposed to be able to throw light upon the subject, out of the abundance of their learning, were celebrated hebraists, biblical critics, and professors of history, the expression of whose views is often quite incidental, and founded upon facts or analogies which happened to strike them while pursuing investigations but indirectly connected with it. Annalists, geographers, and chronologists, who made a special study of cosmogony, are more legitimate authorities; and authors who wrote concerning any portions of this country from personal observation, or as compilers of the narratives of others, are entitled to a due consideration of their impressions in regard to the probable sources of its population.

It would be too wide a departure from the object of this cursory review to attempt a scrutiny of the circumstances under which opinions were formed, or the grounds on which they were based, beyond such allusions as in the course of a rapid summary have been, or may be, casually introduced.

nent.

The theory of an indigenous origin of men and animals in America, goes behind all others, of course, whether relating to a part only, or to the whole of the contiThis view has not been uncommon among writers of a certain school. Cornelius de Pauw, one of the philosophic coterie of Frederic the great, argued that life in the New World was not only distinct in its origin but of inferior quality, the men having less vigor of mind and body, and animals less of spirit and strength than their congeners elsewhere.1

Count Carli, an Italian of distinguished scientific attainments, undertook a refutation of the opinions of de Pauw, and at the same time endeavored to establish his own in favor of the former existence of the island or continent of Atlantis, five or six thousand years before our era; which he supported by a learned analysis of mythological and historical traditions, geological phenomena, and astronomical calculations.2

The hypothesis of submerged land in the Atlantic Ocean is, in fact, that which is most generally resorted to by those who suppose the western continents to have been peopled anterior to the flood of the Scriptures.

Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, whose history of the discovery of the New World was compiled from the manuscripts of Columbus, held that the inhabitants of Yucatan were descended from Ethiopians. Oviedo, under whose administration as Director of the mines of St. Domingo, the natives melted away beneath the severity of their taskwork, in his History of the Indies affirms, that the Antilles are the Hesperides of the ancients. Andrew Thevet, a Frenchman of great learning, but accused of

1 Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américaines, &c.

A French translation of Carli's American Letters, with notes and additions by Lefebre de Villebrune, was published in Boston and Paris simultaneously, in 1788.

credulity, who came to Brazil in 1555, charged with the establishment of a religious colony, believed in the transatlantic migration of the Israelites: Gomara and de Lery, with similar opportunities of observation, as already stated, made the Americans to descend from the Canaanites.

William Postel, an ingenious ethnological writer and oriental scholar, sometimes called a visionary,1 maintained that all North America was peopled from Mauritania. He is the first who made a distinction between North and South America, supposing them to have nothing in common in their origin. The Peruvians and Chilians, he traced to the Gauls; in which conjecture he is sustained by Jaques Charron author of a history of the Gauls. Paolo Giovio, an Italian historian of great repute, imagined that the Mexicans derived from the Gauls their practice of human sacrifices. Edward Brerewood, an English antiquary of the sixteenth century, deduced the whole population of the New World from the Tartars. Martin Hamkema (Latinized Hamconius), and Suffrid Petri, two historians of Dutch Friseland, agreed in deriving the occupants of Peru and Chili from the Frisians. Acosta and Garcia, Jesuit Missionaries long in Spanish America, thought the country was peopled by degrees, and from various sources. The former, deeming it not improbable that vessels might, from time to time, have been cast upon these shores, inclined to credit the story from Aristotle, of a Carthaginian ship driven far to the westward, which discovered lands till then unknown, that might have been America. He was at a loss to determine how animals were transported. Athanasius Kircher, a German mathematician and antiquary, who wrote several works concerning Egypt, traced the Americans to the Egyptians, and thought the Atlantis extended from the Canaries to the Azores. Arius Montanus, a Spaniard very learned in Jewish antiquities, Francis Vatable, and Gilbert Genebrard, both eminent professors of Hebrew, at Paris, Anthony Possivin, a learned Jesuit of Mantua, and Martin Becan, a German professor of theology and philosophy, concurred in the belief that the Ophir of Solomon was in America.

Among the most prominent of those who, at an early period, wrote expressly upon the question of the origin of the American nations, are the learned Grotius, the Flemish geographer John De Laet, and the Leyden Professor Horn. Grotius supposed that the Isthmus of Panama was an impenetrable barrier between the two divisions of the continent. With the exception of Yucatan and its neighborhood, he makes the whole of North America to have been peopled by the Norwegians, by way of Iceland, Greenland, Estotiland, &c., who were followed, some ages after, by Danes, Swedes, and other German nations. He believes, with Peter Martyr, that some Ethiopians, who were Christians, may have been cast on the shores of Yucatan. He would derive the Indians of South America, near the Straits of Magellan, from the Moluccas and Java. The Peruvians, he doubts not, are a Chinese Colony. The Tartars, or Scythians, he excludes entirely.

Upon the dissertation of Grotius, De Laet published a sharp criticism, and a warm controversy arose between them. Having disposed of most of the theories of Grotius,

1 “Célèbre visionaire, et l'un des plus savants hommes de son siècle.”—Biog. Universelle.

successfully, as Charlevoix thinks, whose convenient summary of their views is here abbreviated, and having also reviewed the positions of other writers, De Laet expresses his own, viz: that the ancient inhabitants of the Canaries, whose deserted edifices were seen, according to Pliny, by the first Europeans who discovered those islands, had passed over to America, and that, with equal probability, passages might have been effected from the Cape Verdes to Brazil. Great Britain, Ireland, and the Orcades, are also admitted as probable sources of emigration, and the story of Madoc is received with favor. He thinks colonies might have come from the Scythians, and that South America was peopled from New Guinea. He concludes with an examination of the opinion of Emanuel de Moraes, that the whole country was peopled by the Carthaginians and Israelites.

Prof. Horn, who had the advantage of coming after most of the authors already referred to, discusses the subject in a Latin treatise of two hundred and eighty-two pages, 12mo, printed in 1652. Having reference to previous opinions, he excludes from the New World, as original colonists, Ethiopians, Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, Celts, Samoides and Laplanders, Greeks and Latins, Hebrews, Christians and Mahometans. He supposes that the country began to be peopled from the north by the Scythians; that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians afterwards got footing by the Atlantic Ocean, and the Chinese by the Pacific; that other nations might from time to time have landed here; and, lastly, that some Jews and Christians may have arrived, but not till the land was already peopled. He considers it probable that the Atlantis of Plato was part of America, and was submerged in the deluge of which traditions remained among the Mexicans.

The relation of Diodorus Siculus, respecting the large island visited by the Phoenicians, he regards as indicating their second emigration to America; their third and last being in the service of Solomon to Ophir, which is Hayti. The later emigrations he would make out to be of three sorts of Scythians, viz: the Huns, the Tartars of Cathay, and the Chinese. The following are some of his fanciful derivations. The Apalaches of Florida from the Apaleans of Solinus; the Tombas of Peru from the Tabians of Ptolemy; the northern Hurons from the Huyrons, neighbors of the Moguls; the Iroquois from the Yrcas, or Turks.

These references might be very much extended; but the foregoing are perhaps sufficient to indicate the principal varieties of opinion, and the more prominent among early authors by whom they have been entertained. Other writers appear to have added little to their facts or their arguments, although many changes have been rung upon these in their application.

The sources of derivation that appear to have been regarded as possessing the strongest claims to consideration, are the Hebrews (by whom the lost tribes are most commonly signified); the Phoenicians under various names, as Carthaginians, Tyrians, Canaanites, &c.; the Scythians, and the Scandinavians. Analogies in arts and customs have led to the supposition of Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Chinese, Hindoo, and other colonies in America; but the four sources above mentioned seem to have found the most numerous advocates.

Some of the later supporters of the Hebrew origin of the Indian tribes have already been mentioned. The Phoenician emigrations are presented under a new

aspect in the work of Dr. Cabrera, published in 1822;1 and the somewhat peculiar production of George Jones, printed in 1843,2 not only maintains the advent of the Tyrians, but also the arrival of St. Thomas and the introduction of Christianity, a notion to which certain supposed Christian symbols in Central America gave rise at a very early period.3

In the work of Rivero and Von Tschudi, on Peruvian antiquities, recently translated by Rev. Dr. Hawks, the Scandinavian tale of Whitemen (Irish), established in the Carolinas, and perhaps in Florida, who had horses, is admitted as a certainty, while credit is also given to various ancient speculations; and the translator states that the hypothesis of a Phoenician origin for that body of settlers who peopled Guatemala, has, within the last two or three years, been invested with fresh interest by the new discoveries of the Abbé de Bourbourg, whose work was said to be in the press at Paris.

With regard to the maritime skill and enterprise of very early periods, it may be remarked that the tendency at present is to ascribe to those periods a wider knowledge of the form and surface of the earth, and of the arts of navigation, than has sometimes been deemed warrantable; and this tendency is the result of enlarged information upon cosmical questions.

Humboldt not only yields a belief to the circumnavigation of Africa at a very remote era, but expresses the opinion, founded upon careful investigations, that the Canary Islands were known to the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans, and, perhaps, even to the Etruscans. This admission, of course, implies a

4

1 Translation of Del Rio's Description of an Ancient City near Palenque; to which is added a Critical Investigation and Research into the History of the Americans, by Dr. Paul Felix Cabrera, Lond. 1822.

2 An Original History of Ancient America, founded upon the Ruins of Antiquity, the Identity of the Aborigines with the People of Tyre and Israel, and the Introduction of Christianity by the Apostle St. Thomas, by George Jones, R. S. I: M. F. S. V., &c., London and New York, 1843.

3

s Clavigero's Mexico, pp. 13 and 14, Cullen's translation.

Madame Calderon de la Barca inserts the following account of these emblems of Christianity in her "Life in Mexico," 1843:

"It is strange, yet well authenticated, that the symbol of the cross was well known to the Indians before the arrival of Cortez. In the Island of Cozumel, near Yucatan, there were several, and in Yucatan itself there was a stone cross. And there an Indian, considered a prophet among his countrymen, had declared that a nation, bearing the same as a symbol, should arrive from a distant country! More extraordinary still was a temple, dedicated to the holy cross by the Toltec nation, in the city of Cholulu. Near Tulansingo, there is also a cross engraved on a rock with various characters, which the Indians, by tradition, ascribe to the Apostle St. Thomas. In Oajaca, also, there existed a cross, which the Indians, from time immemorial, had been accustomed to consider as a divine symbol. By order of the Bishop Cervantes, it was placed in a sumptuous chapel in the cathedral. Information concerning its discovery, together with a small cup cut out of its wood, was sent to Rome by Paul V., who received it on his knees, singing the hymn 'Vexilla Regis,' &c."

4

• Cosmos, N. Y. ed., II. 135, n.