118 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA 
quite singular and unlike. Their oriental peculiarities, which strike the 
casual observer, are their dress, shaved heads and queues, habits, odor, and 
guttural language. Chinese are the only nation on the continent of Asia 
that use chairs and tables. Isolated nations, like hermits, cannot escape 
being distinguished by eccentric habits. Now, if the high civilization of 
Peru, which was in full tide B. C. 1800, and probably many centuries before, 
crossed to China in very early days, bringing its accurate measure of the 
solar year, and the arts of making paper and writing, all the necessary mate- 
rial was furnished China for the production of correct and reliable historic 
records. In reviewing Chinese early history, we have found that, B. C., 
Tai Ko Foki, their Great Stranger King, introduced a knowledge of these 
things, with hieroglyphic characters, and first divided time for them into 
lunar months and solar years. And we have shown that the authentic com- 
prehensible history of China begins with his reign. 
Now we inquire, did Foki, with all this valuable knowledge, come from 
Peru B. C. 3588, and settle among a pre-existing people, perhaps similar to, 
if not the aboriginal Miautz, long since driven from the plains of China into 
the almost inaccessible fastnesses of its mountain barriers? 
A knowledge of days already existed among the sun-worshipers of Asia, 
who doubtless kept their records in days; but the introduction of a scale 
measuring by months and years placed their history on a footing we can 
comprehend; and the introduction of the art of writing enabled them to 
perpetuate it by enduring records. When we discover the measures of time, 
used to gauge ancient histories before these improvements were introduced, 
we shall doubtless find their records reasonably authentic. We have as little 
understood their stupendous figures as strangers conceive the value of a 
Brazilian rea, some 1000 of which, make a sum equal to the United States 
dollar; and accounts involving such currency bear the formidable aspect of 
immense sums, to the uninformed. With advancing centuries, the measure 
of time doubtless lengthens. 
After the children of Israel left Egypt, where the solar year was known, 
records of extreme longevity disappear, and ordinary terms of life are ad- 
hered to. We should judge cautiously, and refrain from any interpretation 
at variance with human reason and common sense. The lunar changes, 
without doubt, were employed in the measurement of time in all warm cli- 
mates before the introduction of the solar year. The colder the winter, the 
more marked the year became as a measure of time. Day and night would 
naturally suggest themselves as the first measure. Peruvians, Chinese, Egyp- 
tians, Hebrews, Japanese, Polynesians, and others, all attribute great long- 
evity to their earliest ancestry, until the introduction of higher mathematics 
and the solar year. 
The oldest histories preserved to us become what in our day we call au- 
thentic, when their nations acquired the art of writing, and divided time in a 
regular and uniform manner, by the solar year. 
The first and fabulous epochs of most histories begin with dynasties of deified 
warriors. The tendency to deification exists among all early nations, and we 
need not go out of our own history to proveit. Edmond the Confessor, the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, who died as late as 1242, was canonized as a 
