28 DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



petent to give a sound, critical opinion on such a momentous question, 

 yet I would not have my friends of the Davenport Academy conceive 

 that I give this subject simply as a curious coincidence, or as a piece 

 of transcendental archaeology. BeUeving the narration of the Chinese 

 annals to be in the main part true, we cannot afford to entirely throw 

 out any fact remotely bearing on this disputed point of Chinese dis- 

 covery. We have certain evidence of the shipwreck of Chinese and 

 Japanese ships upon the coast of Alaska, Oregon, and California as far 

 back as nearly 150 years ago, so that the probability of the discovery 

 of America's west coast at an early date is not so impossible. This, 

 coupled with the zeal so well known to have been elsewhere displayed 

 by Buddhist missionaries lends inferentially a great deal of strength to 

 the claim of the Chinese annals. This discovery admitted, then the 

 singularity of the resemblance between the marks on the carved shell 

 and the Buddhist signs of Figs, i and 2 remains simply to be shown as 

 such, saving any direct evidence that proves the carving as merely con- 

 ventional or the work of chance. 



Fig. 131 of the Report on Ethnology, 1881, gives a representation of 

 a carved ornamental "shell gorget." The description on page 467 calls 

 the center figure " a conventionalized figure of an insect resembling a 

 spider." It may be that such was the idea of the carver, yet if we turn 

 to Ilios, pages 337-338, and compare the figure of the Trojan " lead 

 idol" and its description by Dr. Schliemann, there is a curious "rap- 

 prochement" between the navel and vulva marks of the "lead idol" 

 and the marks and triangular figure at the base of the carved figure on 

 the shell gorget. 



Can all these singular affinities be relegated to chance or idle work? 

 We cannot believe. 



