290 HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 



In that fifteenth century it had not occurred to the boldest scientific 

 adventurer to conceive of the possibility of men who were not of the 

 race of Adam. Speculative philosophy and science were, indeed, 

 venturing boldly on many novel courses ; yet St. Augustine's demon- 

 stration, which had satisfied the men of the fourth century of the im- 

 possibility of antipodes, was reproduced with undiminished force to 

 those of the fifteenth century : since to assert the existence of inhabited 

 lands on the opposite side of the earth, and beyond impassable oceans, 

 would be to contradict the Bible, by maintaining that the world was 

 occupied in part by nations not descended from Adam. From this it 

 naturally resulted that when, in spite of such demonstration, anti- 

 podes were discovered ; and an inhabited continent had been explored 

 beyond the Atlantic, presenting to the gaze of the Old World social 

 and political institutions, arts, and sciences, the growth of unknown 

 centuries of progress : the only question discussed was, from what 

 centre of the Eastern hemisphere were those derived ? Egypt, Phoe- 

 nicia, Carthage, India, China, Spain, Denmark, Ireland, and Wales, 

 each found its advocates: The lost Atlantis of Plato and Seneca ; 

 the Ophir of Solomon ; the nameless Atlantic islands of Hanno, 

 Pharaoh-Necho, and other early explorers ; the sanctuary of the lost 

 Ten Tribes; theVinland of Leif Ericson ; the Huitramannaland of the 

 Norse rovers from Iceland ; and the western retreat of Madoc, son of 

 Owen Gwyneth, King of North Wales : have all been sought in turn, 

 and have stimulated the ingenious fancy of sanguine explorers among 

 the traces of America's unwritten history. 



That nations, possessed of language, arts, and government, were in 

 occupation of America, was proof enough that the human race — the 

 unity of which was then unquestioned, — had diffused itself into the west- 

 ern hemisphere ; and this idea presented itself at first in a less startling 

 form, from the belief, in which Columbus died, that only a new route 

 had been opened up to eastern Asia. The conviction of ancient inter- 

 course between the eastern and western hemispheres, fostered by such 

 means, has accordingly furnished fruitful themes for speculation, 

 almost from the first landing of Europeans on the American continent. 

 Exaggerated resemblances have been traced out in the arts and archi- 

 tecture of Mexico and Peru to those of Egypt and India. Their 

 hieroglyphics and picture writing have been hastily pronounced to be 

 the undoubted offspring of those of the Nile. Philological resem- 

 blances, astronomical chronology, and religious rites, have all bee& 



