IN THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 57 



of it depends on archeological evidence and another on tradition. 

 The most important evidences are : the narratives of travelers them- 

 selves or the accounts written of travelers by their contemporaries ; 

 maps. In many cases a map is the only record. It delineates a 

 land or a sea of which there is no written account dating back as 

 far as the date of the map. And when one finds on a map some 

 earth feature correctly placed and even if one knows nothing of it? 

 discovery or its discoverer, it is difficult to refuse to recognize that 

 that particular bit of the world had been seen and reported by some 

 perhaps forgotten person. Maps in fact are something like por- 

 traits. A genuine portrait is hard to deny. So valuable as iden- 

 tifications are photographic portraits, that now they are placed on 

 passports in some countries. If at all accurate, maps are among the 

 most uncontrovertible evidences of geographical discovery. And it 

 is precisely on maps that many of the riddles connected with the 

 unfolding of the geography of the American continent are 

 presented. 



The earliest European invaders of the American continent found 

 it tenanted by native races. Who were these races and when and 

 where did they come from? While no positive answer can be 

 given to these questions, yet we know now that our American 

 natives have been here a long, long time, and that they had been 

 acted on by the force of evolution for many millenniums before the 

 white race came to contest with them the ownership of the lands 

 stretching from Grant Land to Tierra del Fuego. The ancestors of 

 our historic Indians and of our present Eskimo were, of course, 

 the real original inhabitants of America, but when and how they 

 became so is at present unknown to us. Were they autochthones? 

 We do not know ! Or did they wander in from Asia ? Again we 

 do not know ! But if they did the latter, and it certainly seems 

 the most probable, then they spread over the American continent by 

 migration and, in a certain sense therefore, were its original 

 discoverers. 



The evolution of the European invasion of America, as far as 

 accessible records show, begins in early historic times. Between 

 the years looo and 500 B.C., some Phoenicians circumnavigated 



