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THE CANADIAN JOURNAL. 



NEW SERIES 



No. LIIL— SEPTEMBEE, 1864*. 



HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 



BY DANIEI. WILSON, LL.D., 



PBOMSSS'OE OB HI3T0ET ABTD ENGLTSH IIIEBATXTBH, UNIVElStTy COLIEGB, TOBOJflO, 



With the facilities of intercourse which steam navigation has created 

 between Europe and America, and the habitual resort of the settlers 

 on the Western Continent, to the marts and centres of gaiety of the 

 Old World, it is becoming more and more difficult for us to realise all 

 that is implied in the date A.D., 1492, as that in which American 

 history begins. Few facts in the history of our globe are more singu- 

 lar, than that one hemisphere should have remained utterly unknown 

 to the other till the close of the fifteenth century ; and the wondering 

 admiration with which the discovery of the New World was then 

 greeted by the Old, was not diminished by the disclosures that fol- 

 lowed. New, indeed, the western hemisphere was, as is the planet 

 Neptune, or the latest discovered asteroid ; or as the Flint-Folk of the 

 drift are new to us. But with the discoveries of Cortes and Pizaro, 

 the men of Europe became gradually familiarised with the conviction 

 that it was no new world they had found ; but one with native relics 

 of an ancient past : pyramids, temples, and hieroglyphics tempting to 

 a comparison with those of Egypt ; and sculptures, rites, and institu- 

 tions of various kinds, all pregnant with suggestive resemblances to 

 those of the oldest Asiatic nations. 



Vol. IX. Tj 



