THEORIES AND SPECULATIONS. 15 



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 

 Tynans, 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 anticpiities, recently trans- 

 lated 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 inte- 

 rest by the new discoveries of the Abbe 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 know- 

 ledge 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 Ro- 

 mans, and, perhaps, even to the Etruscans. 4 This admission, of course, implies a 



1 Translation of Del Rio's Description of an Ancient City near Palenque ; to which is added a Cri- 

 tical Investigation and Research into the History of the Americans, by Dr. Paul Felix Cabrera, Lond. 

 1822. 



3 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 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 coun- 

 trymen, 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 hoty 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." 



1 Cosmos, N. Y. ed., II. 135, u. 



