ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 115 
Fernando Montesino, a Spanish historian, who visited Peru and published 
his work from 1508 to 1547, says Peru was thickly populated, and had a cata- 
logue of 101 monarchs, with notes of the memorable events of their reign, 
extending to B. CO. 2,655. 
Hawks, in his Peruvian antiquities, says that before the Spanish conquest, 
in the most eminent period of the dynasty of the Incas, the vast empire of 
Peru contained eleven million inhabitants, which rapidly diminished, until 
the census of 1580 shows but 8,280,000, and now the valleys of the Peruvian 
coast contain barely a fifth of what they contained under the Incas. The 
total present population by census of 1875 amounts to only 2,720,735 souls. 
A light native is still called a China-Chola. 
The feast of souls practiced in Central America appears to have been derived 
from the same source as that of the ancient Egyptians. The Jesuits of the 
Propaganda report these ceremonies as anciently in practice in China. The 
ruins of ancient temples found in Central America resemble in form, space, 
and massive walls, without roof, the most ancient temples of Egypt, and many 
of the carvings are singularly alike. 
Traditionary histories among the difterent groups of the Polynesian Islands 
indicate that the Hawaiian race came there from the south. The Hawaiian 
Islands are nearly in the direct line from Peru to China. 
While the majority of Hawaiians are probably descended from Malays, 
their early traditions tell us of the landing of men belonging to a race whiter 
than their own, upon the southern island of Hawaii, many centuries ago, 
whom they were at first inclined to consider as gods, but who finally settled 
among them, and from their wisdom were elevated to high positions. These 
men undoubtedly came from Central America or Peru, and may have been 
from the ancient Peruvian empire, or the later kingdom of the Incas, or from 
that early civilization whose traces yet remain in Yucatan. 
It has been sufficiently demonstrated that even frail canoes and boats, 
either by accident or design, have performed voyages across wide oceans. In 
1819, Kotsebue found at Radack group four natives of the Caroline Islands, 
who had been driven eastward ina canoe 1,500 miles. In 1849 men came 
from Honolulu to San Francisco, 2,300 miles, in whale boats. And more 
recently the boisterous Atlantic ocean has been crossed from New York to 
Liverpool by a solitary man in a dory. 
A dozen of the crew of the clipper ship ‘‘ Golden Light,’’ burned in the 
South Pacific about 1865, just west of Cape Horn, reached Hawaii in eighty- 
one days, in a whale boat under sail, and would have run upon the reef at ~ 
Laopahoihoi, but for natives who swam off to rescue these exhausted people, 
all of whom survived. 
While we have cited facts showing it reasonable to suppose that early Peru- 
vians or Central Americans may have come to China, by the aid of continu- 
ous fair winds, it is no less necessary to show the almost insurmountable dif- 
ficulties which exist during a greater part of the year to impede their return 
by sea. To beat back against strong trade-winds and the long regular seas of 
the Pacific, would be a task in which they would surpass our best modern 
clippers, which now can only make the voyage by running far north and 
crossing from Japan to the coast of California, upon the arc of a great circle, 
