126 Augujl 1749. 



gether, they found them perfe6:ly alike^^ 

 Notwithlianding the queftions which the 



French 



in Marco Paolo, that Kithlai-Khan, one of the fucceflbrs of 

 Ge-nghizkhan, after the conqueft of the fouthern part of 

 China, fent fhips out, to conquer the kingdom of Japan, 

 or, as they call it, Nipan-gri, but in a terrible llorm the 

 whole fleet was call away, and nothing was ever heard of 

 the men in that fleet. It feems that fome of thefe fhips 

 were call to the Azores, oppofite the great America7i lakes, 

 between forty and fifty degrees north latitude, and there 

 probably ereded thefe monumentF, and were the ancellors 

 of fome nations, who are called Mozetnlecks, and have fome 

 degree of civilization. Another part of this fleet, it feems, 

 reached the country oppofite Mexico, and there founded the 

 Mexican ejr.pire, which, according to their own records, as 

 preferred by the Spaniards, and in their painted annals, in 

 Furchas's Piigri?nage, are very recent ; fo that they can 

 fcarcely remember any more than feven princes before 

 Motezitma II. who was reigning when the Spaniards arrived 

 there, 1519, under Fernando Cortez; confequently the firllof 

 thefe princes, fuppofing each had a reign of thirty-three years 

 and four months, and adding to it the fixteen years of Mo- 

 tezuma, began to reign in the year 1270, when Kublai- 

 Khan, the conqueror of all China and ol Japan, was on the 

 throne, and in whofe time happened, I believe, the firft 

 abortive expedition to Japan, which I mentioned above, 

 and probably furniihed North- Ameica, with civilized in- 

 habitants. There is, if I am not miftaken, a great fimila- 

 rity between the figures of the Mexican idols, and thofe 

 which are ufual among the Tartars, who embrace the doc- 

 trines and religion of the Daldi-La?na, whofe religion Kii- 

 blc.i-Khan firft introduced among the Monguls, or Moguls. 

 The favage Indians of North-America, it leems, have an- 

 other origin, and are probably defcended from the Yi:kag~ 

 hiri and Tchucktchi, inhabitants of the moft eafterly and 

 northerly part oi AJia, where, according to the accounts of 

 the Ruffians, there is but a fmall trajed to America. The 

 ferocity of thefe nations, fimilar to that of the Americans, 

 their way of pointing, their fondncfs of inebriating liquors, 



(which 



