OCEANIC UISCVjVERIES. 29fi 



tCi i icL^foJS freedom, and with the sudden enlargement of 

 ihe Knowledge of the earth and the heavens ? Such an aga 

 owes a very inconsiderable portion of its greatnc.ss to the dis- 

 tance at which we contemplate it, or to the circumstance of 

 its appearing before us amid the records of history, and free 

 from the disturbing reality of the present. But here too, as 

 in all earthly things, the brilliancy of greatness is dimmed by 

 the association of en:otions of profound sorrow. The advance 

 of cosmical knowledge was bought at the price of the violence 

 and revolting horrors A'hich conquerors — the so-called eivil- 

 izers of the earth — spread around them. But it were irra- 

 tional and rashly bold to decide dogmatically on the balance 

 of blessings and evils in the interrupted history of the develop- 

 ment of mankind. It becomes not man to pronounce judg- 

 ment on the great events of the world's history, which, slowly 

 developed in the womb of time, belong but partially to the 

 age in which we place them. 



The first discovery of the central and southern portions of 

 the United States of America by the Northmen coincides very 

 nearly with the mysterious appearance of Manco Capac in 

 the elevated plateaux of Peru, and is almost two hundred years 

 prior to the arrival of the Azteks in the Valley of INIexico. 

 The foundation of the principal city (Tenochtitlan) occurred 

 fully three hundred and twenty-five years later. If these 

 Scandinavian colonizations had been attended by permanent 

 results, if they had been maintained and protected by a pow- 

 erful mother country, the advancing Germanic races would 

 fitill have found many unsettled hordes of hunters in those re- 

 gions where the Spanish conquerors met with only peacefully- 

 eettled agriculturists.* 



* The American race, which was tLe same from 65° north latitude 

 to 55° south latitude, passed directly from the life of hunters to that of 

 cultivators of the soil, without undergoing the intermediate gradation 

 of a pastoral life. This circumstance is go much the more remai'kable, 

 because the bison, w^hich is met with in enormous herds, is susceptible 

 of domestication, and yields an abundant supply of milk. Little atten- 

 tion has been paid to an account given in Gomara {Hist. Gen. de la* 

 Indias, cap. 214), according to which it would appear that in the six- 

 teenth century there was a race of men living in the northwest of Mex- 

 ico, in about 40° north latitude, whose greatest riches consisted in herds 

 of tamed bisons {bueyes con una giba). From these animals the natives 

 obtained materials for clothing, food, and drink, which was probably 

 the blood (Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, vol. iii., p. 416), for the dis- 

 like to milk, or, at least, its non-employment, appears, before the arrival 

 of Europeans, to have been commoi to all the natives of the New Con- 

 tinent, as well as to the inhabitants of China and Cochin China. There 

 were certainly from the earliest times, herds of domesticated llamas ia 



