2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



volume by Mr. Edward P. Vining entitled An Inglorious Columbus. 

 Under this unfortunate title one may find the most painstaking col- 

 location of the many memoirs written upon this subject, with the 

 Chinese account of the land of Fusang in Chinese characters, and 

 appended thereto the various translations of the document by De 

 Guines, Williams, Julien, and other eminent sinologues. 



To the French Orientalist, M. de Guines, we are indebted for 

 our first knowledge of certain ancient records of the Chinese, which 

 briefly record the visit of Chinese Buddhist monks to the land 

 of Fusang in the year 458 of our era, and the return of a single 

 Buddhist monk from this land in 499. De Guines's memoir appeared 

 in 1761, and for forty years but little attention was drawn to it. 

 Humboldt says that, according to the learned researches of Father 

 Gaubil, it appears doubtful whether the Chinese ever visited the 

 western coast of America at the time stated by De Guines. In 1831, 

 Klaproth, the eminent German Orientalist, combated the idea that 

 Fusang was Mexico, and insisted that it was Japan. In 1844 the 

 Chevalier de Paravey argued that Fusang should be looked for in 

 America. Prof. Karl Friedrich Neumann also defended this idea. 

 In magazine articles in 1850-1862, and finally in book form in 1875, 

 Mr. C. G. Leland supported with great ingenuity the idea of Chinese 

 contact based on the Fusang account. In 1862 M. Jose Perez also 

 defended the idea. In 1865 M. Gustave d'Eichthal published his 

 memoir on the Buddhistic origin of American civilization, and in 

 the same year M. Vivien de Saint-Martin combated the theory, and 

 since that time many others have written upon the subject in favor or 

 in opposition to the idea of Asiatic contact. 



These hasty citations are only a few of the many that I have 

 drawn from Mr. Vining's encyclopedic compilation. 



It is extraordinary what a keen fascination the obscure paths of 

 regions beyond history and usually beyond verification have to many 

 minds, and the fascination is as justifiable as the desire to explore 

 unknown regions of the earth. In the one case, however, we have 

 a tangled mass of legendary tales coming down from a time when 

 dragons were supposed to exist, when trees were miles in height, 

 when people lived to a thousand years, when every unit of measure- 

 ment was distorted and every physical truth, as we know it to-day, 

 had no recognition, while in the other case we have at least a con- 

 tinuity of the same land and sea extending to the unexplored beyond. 

 This impulse of the human mind finds an attractive problem in the 

 question as to the origin of the American races. Dr. Brinton has 

 insisted on the unreasonable nature of the inquiry by asking an 

 analogous one: " Whence came the African negroes? All will reply, 

 'From Africa, of course.' 'Originally?' 'Yes, originally; they 



