HOLMES] ABOEIGTNAL AMERICAlSr ANTIQUITIES PART I 33 



scrap of evidence " can be adduced in support of the once generally 

 accepted idea of a preglacial or early glacial elevation of the northern 

 Atlantic sea bed. The elevation of this region was probably assumed 

 by glacialists as the best means of explaining the glacial period. 

 This route may be omitted, therefore, from consideration as a prob- 

 able avenue for European migrations to America at any date 

 decidedly more remote than the voyages of Ericsson. Highly devel- 

 oped water craft carrying fresh water and a food supply would be 

 required to traverse the three formidable stretches of open sea 

 between the Faroe Islands and Labrador. There are no currents 

 setting in the proper direction to aid in this voyage, and, besides, 

 storm-driven mariners are hardly to be counted on as colonists. 

 The chance of voyagers having reached America intentionally 

 from southern Europe Avith the aid of the trade 

 Route ^ ^^ ^^ winds or the mid- Atlantic currents, prior to the time 

 of Columbus, is, in the absence of evidence, perhaps 

 too slight to call for serious consideration, although, as mentioned in 

 the preceding section, seagoing craft sailed successfully the 2,400 

 miles of the ISIediterranean long before the time of Columbus. The 

 shortest possible voyage between Africa and South America is 

 upward of 1,500 miles in length, and tides, currents, and wind would 

 afford but slight aid and that one way only. The fabled Atlantis 

 has been regarded as a possible haven to the voyager between the two 

 continents, but geologists say that if an Atlantis ever existed it 

 certainly disappeared long before men sailed the seas.- 



In the southern and middle Pacific there are thousands of miles 

 of open sea separating South America from the nearest Pacific 

 islands, a condition precluding the idea that very 

 Route '^ ^^*^^^*^ primitive peoples could have fo^md a thoroughfare 

 here. The early Polynesians were venturesome 

 sailors of the Pacific and probably even reached the Easter group, 

 but between this and South America are 1,200 miles of open sea, 

 and geologists have discovered no evidence tending to show that this 

 great gap was ever bridged or diminished. The same may be said of 

 the route of the North Pacific current, which originates in the Japan 

 Sea and sweeps the shoi-es of North America from the Aleutian 

 Islands to the Gulf of California. Traversing these vast wastes of 

 ocean was hardly possible, even by drifting vovagers, until within 

 comparatively recent times. Such vo3^ages can hardly have resulted 

 in colonization or in seriously affecting blood or culture in regions al- 

 ready occupied. The story of Fusang, the land acci- 

 story of Fusang dentally reached by early Chinese voyagers, is not of 

 consequence in this connection, since the time is re- 

 cent, and since it is not at all probable that the land visited and re- 



