8 Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton Smith 
ated on small islands of the volcanic range in the Chinese 
seas, known by the name of the Carolines. This range 
is still subject to the action of all the phenomena attend- 
dant upon subterranean fire, and the parts above water, in 
many places, seem to indicate that a great surface of the 
earth has sunk into the sea, leaving only summits above 
water, or that these summits, with the ruins upon them, are 
gradually returning to the surface; but that once a more 
numerous people existed here than could find subsistence on 
the present surfaces, and was in possession of certain arts 
of civilized life, is beyond dispute. Here, then, we have the 
counterpart of our western Atlantis, and perhaps the founda- 
tion of that Zepangri which Marco Polo had heard of in the 
East. In Japan, according to Dr Syburg, wrought jewellery 
has been found under conditions which must refer it to a 
people and age totally unknown; and in the Chinese seas, 
near the Island Formosa, a peculiar green porcelain, that 
cannot now be manufactured, is fished up, unless the trade 
is an imposture, which may ever be suspected where that 
crafty people is concerned. 
Again, there are the Parallellitha of Tinian, the rock idols 
of Christmas Island and of Pitcairn’s, where no human foot 
was supposed to have trodden till the mutineers of the 
Bounty landed, and found, in these sculptured remains, un- 
equivocal proof that a people had anteriorly lived upon that 
rock, and had perished or had departed. On the west coast 
of America, no structures of the class usually denominated 
cromlechs have yet been noticed; but they exist on the 
north-eastern side of that continent, in Newfoundland, and 
in several places of the United States, to a distance in the 
interior, precluding all probability that at any time they 
were set up by the Scandinavian adventurers who visited 
Greenland, and, it would seem, from later information, ex- 
plored the coast southward as far as Brazil, where, it is’ 
asserted, a Runic inscription has been discovered ; or there 
was a far greater number of tempest-driven adventurers 
from the west of Europe than Scandinavian Sagas knew of, 
not lost at sea, but cast upon the east coast of the new 
world, and absorbed in its population. There exist beyond 
