by an Indian Chief. 211 
of China, and those of America, there are other lands which 
~ to this day have remained unknown ; and who will take upon 
him to say there is no land, because it has never yet been dis- 
covered? I have therefore good grounds to believe, that the 
Mexicans came originally from China or Japan, especially 
when I consider their reserved and uncommunicative disposi- 
tion, which, to thisday, prevails among the people of the eas- 
tera partsof Asia. The great antiquity of the Chinese nation 
likewise makes it possible that a colony might have gone from 
thence to America, early enough to be looked upon as the 
ancient of the country, by the first of the Phenicians who 
could be supposed to arrive there. Asa further corrobora- 
‘tion of my conjectures, I was informed by a man of learning 
ic 1752, that in the King’s library there isa Chinese manu- 
script, which positively affirms that America was peopled 
by the inhabitants of Corea. 
Moncacht-apé after giving me an account of his travels, 
spent four or five days visiting among the Natches, and then 
returned to take leave of me, when I made him a present of 
several wares of no great value, among which was a concave 
mirror about two inches and a half diameter which had cost 
me about three half-pence. As this magnified the face to four 
or five times its natural size, he was wonderfully delighted 
with it, and would not have exchanged it with the best mirror 
in France. After expressing his regret at parting with me, 
he returned highly satisfied to his own nation. 
Moncacht-apé's account of the junction of America with 
the eastern parts of Asia, seems confirmed from the following 
remarkable fact. ‘* Some years ago the skeletons of twolarge 
elephants and two small ones were discovered in a marsh 
near the river Ohio; and as they were not much consumed, 
it is supposed that the elephants came from Asia not many 
years before. If we also consider the form of government, 
and the manner of living among the northern nations of 
America, there will appear a great resemblance betwixt them 
and the Tartars in the north east part of Asia.” 
The foregoing story has in it many internal marks of truth. 
Some of the more prominent of them may be here succinctly 
stated. 
Indians who have never seen the ebbing and flowing of the 
tide are wonderfully struck with this phenomenon, Many 
of the inhabitants of Quebec must still remember that the 
great deputation of Lodian Chiefs, from the interior and from 
the Mississippi, which came to Quebec during the adminis- 
tration 
