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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



TnE Discovery of America. By John Fiske. 

 Cambridge : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

 1892. In two volumes. 



Prof. Fiske opens his subject with a dis- 

 cussion of the question of the grade of cult- 

 ure reached by the inhabitants of the Ameri- 

 can continent at the time of the discovery. 

 The gorgeous accounts given by the Span- 

 iards of the civilization of Mexico and Peru 

 have survived until quite recent times, not 

 only in the popular imagination, but in the 

 writings of sober-minded authors. Careful 

 research has, however, dissipated these earlier 

 conceptions of American culture and put it 

 in the right relation to the condition of ad- 

 vancement reached by the Old World peoples. 

 Prof. Fiske gives the chief credit to the clear- 

 ing up of this question to the late Lewis Mor- 

 gan, whose generalizations he in the main ac- 

 cepts. According to Mr. Morgan's classifica- 

 tion, the three well-marked stages in culture 

 are savagery, barbarism, and civilization, 

 the dividing line between the first two being 

 the invention of pottery, and that between 

 barbarism and civilization the invention of 

 the alphabet. 



According to this classification, none of 

 the American peoples at the time of the voy- 

 age of Columbus had reached a higher stage 

 of culture than the middle status of barbar- 

 ism. In the Old World this stage of culture 

 was marked by the domestication of animals 

 other than the dog, but nowhere in America 

 outside of Peru were there any domesticated 

 animals except the dog, and in the latter 

 those of the Old World were unknown. The 

 social development reached by the aboriginal 

 American was in keeping with that in the 

 arts. The Spaniards, with their notions of 

 society derived from mediaeval Europe, nat- 

 urally interpreted the social arrangements 

 they found in terms of their experience, but 

 nowhere on the American continent, save in 

 Peru, was there anything approaching a na- 

 tion. The organization of the Aztecs in 

 Mexico was similar to that of the more ad- 

 vanced Indians to the north viz., that of 

 the clan. Montezuma, whom the Spaniards 

 mistook for a king, was simply the chief of 

 the clan. The living was communal in 

 structures the property of the clan, and 

 there was no development of the idea of pri- 



vate property except in things purely per- 

 sonal. Peru had passed beyond this stage, 

 and had acquired the position of a rudiment- 

 ary empire, but in some things was less ad- 

 vanced than Mexico. Neither country had 

 yet acquired the art of smelting iron, and be- 

 tween both and the beginnings of civilization 

 there lay the vast tract which terminates with 

 the invention of the phonetic alphabet. 



Prof. Fiske follows his survey of the in- 

 habitants of the American continent by a dis- 

 cussion of the visits of the Northmen to the 

 American coast, and then takes up the rela- 

 tions of Europe with the East, which com- 

 pletes his survey of the subject, preliminary 

 to the memorable voyage of Columbus. In 

 his chapter on pre-Columbian voyages he 

 sums up what is known of the voyages of the 

 Northmen. Far from being mythical, these 

 voyages were very real. These northern sea- 

 men settled Iceland, and from there spread 

 over to Greenland, where two settlements were 

 made which lasted for four hundred years. 

 From these settlements voyages were made 

 down the American coast as far south proba- 

 bly as Massachusetts. An attempt was made 

 to found a settlement in Vinland, which was 

 the name they gave to a part of the coast 

 visited, but this came to no result, and they 

 did nothing beyond visiting the place to cut 

 timber. None of these voyages did anything 

 toward altering the relations of the Eastern 

 and Western world. The two streams of life 

 flowed on as they had for centuries, unknown 

 to each other. It was not until the epoch- 

 making voyage of Columbus and those who 

 followed after that the two worlds were 

 brought into contact. Prof. Fiske, therefore, 

 rightly considers that the voyages of the 

 Northmen were in no sense anticipations of 

 Columbus. 



In order to understand the meaning of 

 the voyage of Columbus, we must understand 

 the economical condition of the Europe of 

 the fifteenth century and its relation to the 

 East or Cathay, as it was termed. We 

 must also, as Prof. Fiske insists, banish 

 from our minds the modern map, and try to 

 put ourselves in the place of the people of 

 that time. A rich trade had for some centu- 

 ries been carried on between Europe and 

 the East, in spices, gums, and fine fabrics. 

 Genoa and Venice were rival centers of this 

 trade, and had each overland routes to the 



