236 COSMOS. 



That this first discovery of America in or before the elev- 

 enth century should not have produced the important and 



Gaelic salutation, hao, hui, iach, having been heard there; of Owen 

 Chapelaiu, in 1669, saving himself from the hands of the Tuscaroras, 

 who were about to scalp him, " because he addressed them in his na- 

 tive Gaelic," have all been appended to the ninth book of my travels 

 (Relation Historique, t. iii., 1825, p. 159). These Tuscaroras of North 

 Carolina are now. however, distinctly recognized by linguistic investi 

 gations as an Iroquois tribe. See Albert Gallatin on Lidian Tri f >es, in 

 the Archaeologia Americana, vol. ii. (1836), p. 23 and 57. An extensive 

 catalogue of Tuscarora words is given by Catlin, one of the most admi- 

 rable observers of manners who ever lived among the aborigines of 

 America. He, however, is inclined to regard the rather fair, and often 

 blue-eyed nation of the Tuscaroras as a mixed people, descended from 

 the ancient Welsh, and from the original inhabitants of the American 

 continent. See his Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Con- 

 ditions of the North American Indians, 1841, vol. i., p. 207 ; vol. ii., p. 

 259 and 262-265. Another catalogue of Tuscarora words is to be found 

 in my brother's manuscript notes respecting languages, in the Royal 

 Library at Berlin. ' As the structure of American idioms appears re- 

 markably strange to nations speaking the modern languages of Western 

 Europe, and who readily suffer themselves to be led away by some 

 accidental analogies of sound, theologians have generally believed th;it 

 they could trace an affinity with Hebrew, Spanish colonists with the 

 Basque, and the English or French settlers with Gaelic, Erse, or the 

 Has Breton. I one day met on the coast of Peru a Spanish naval officer 

 and an English whaling captain, the former of whom declared that he 

 had heard Basque spoken at Tahiti, and the other Gaelic, or Erse, at 

 the Sandwich Islands." Humboldt, Voyage aux Rfgions Equinoc.tiales, 

 Relat. Hist., t. iii., 1825, p. 160. 



Although no connection of language has yet been proved, I by no 

 means wish to deny that the Basques and the people of Celtic origin 

 inhabiting Ireland and Wales, who were early engaged in fisheries on 

 the most remote coasts, may have been the constant rivals of the Scan- 

 dinavians in the northern parts of the Atlantic, and even that the Irish 

 preceded the Scandinavians in the Faro6 Islands and in Iceland. It is 

 much to be desired that, in our days, when a sound and severe spirit 

 of criticism, devoid of a character of contempt, prevails, the old inves- 

 tigations of Powel and Richard Hakluyt ( Voyages and Navigations, vol. 

 iii., p. 4) might be resumed in England and in Ireland. Is the state- 

 ment based on fact, that the wanderings of Madoc were celebrated in 

 the poems of the Welsh bard Meredith, fifteen years before Columbia's 

 discovery? I do not participate in the rejecting spirit which has, but 

 too often, thrown 'popular traditions into obscurity, but I am. on the 

 contrary, firmly persuaded that, by greater diligence and perseverance, 

 many of the historical problems which relate to the maritime expedi- 

 tions of the early part of the Middle Ages; to the striking identity in 

 religious traditions, manner of dividing time, and works of art in Amer- 

 ica and Eastern Asia; to the migrations of the Mexican nations; to the 

 ancient centers of dawning civilization in Aztlan, Quivira, and Upper 

 Louisiana, as well as in the elevated plateaux of Cundinainarca and 

 Peru, will one day be cleared up by discoveries of facts with which 

 we have hitherto been entirely unacquainted. See my Examen Crit 

 de VHist. de la Geogr. du Nouveau Continent, \. ii., p. 142-149 



