81 THE OCEAN. 



the Moluccas, tlie Philippines, and Japan. To the inhabitants of the 

 Aleutian islands and Alaska it gives, as fuel, camphor- wood, and 

 other odoriferous trees from southern countries; it serves too as a 

 highway for all kinds of waifs, carries away disabled ships, and 

 numberless traditions relate how Japanese sailors were drifted afar 

 and landed against their will on the coasts of America. And it is 

 perhaps to an adventure of this kind that the Chinese navigators owe 

 their discovery of the New ^yorld ten centuries before Columbus, if 

 it is true that the country of Fusang, mentioned in the annals of 

 China, is in ftict the countries of Mexico and Guatemala. Messrs. 

 Neumann, d'Eichthal, and other learned scholars do not doubt the 

 authenticity of this historical fact. 



