CIVILIZATION OF PERU. 



77 



"What things are dissimilar may have been the result of intention and 

 reform. The victory of Alexander the Great over the Tyrians, who were 

 active, enterprising, and intelligent navigators, and the description of 

 explorations to the Arabian sea, made by ships built upon the Indus, 

 authorize a suspicion of very ancient intercourse by some competent 

 means between civilized Asia and America, at the south, as well as by 

 northern navigators upon our eastern coasts. 



In evidence of ancient art and contrivance, when Alexander besieged 

 Tyre, more than three hundred years before our era, he employed " chain 

 cables 1 '' for his ships, after the Tyrian divers had cut the rope cables and 

 set his vessels adrift.* 



The hitherto recognised dates are not considered competent to com- 

 pute the period of man's existence on this earth. The original esti- 

 mate being possibly founded upon a different basis of calculation, similar 

 to the comparison alluded to by a sacred writer: "A thousand years in 

 Thy sight are as yesterday when it is passed." 



The existence of a strange pair of foreigners, who arrived from some 

 unknown country, to introduce agriculture, arts, manufactures, and sys- 

 tematic morals, among the native tribes of the Andes, does not appear 

 to be a traditional fiction, but a confirmed fact, in the history of the 

 aborigines of Peru. 



The grateful recollection of the present r?,ce of Indians, for the kind- 

 ness, gentleness, and humanity of the Incas rulers towards their ances- 

 tors, are often compared disadvantageously with the sufferings and pri- 

 vations they think they experienced from subsequent governments, now 

 modified, -by peculiar changes. 



The writer cannot doubt that Manco Capac and hi£ wife were reali- 

 ties. Long voyages, attributed to a commercial people of very ancient 

 date, may authorize an attempt to show the possibility of the discovery 

 and improvement of the aboriginal people, distributed upon this portion 

 of our great continent, by some race versed in arts and knowledge, 

 descended from the Asiatic family, to whom primitive advances in civi- 

 lization have been most anciently attributed. 



The Phoenicians are described to have made voyages from their colo- 

 nial settlements on the shores of the Mediterranean, to obtain amber 

 from the Baltic, and tin from the British islands. 



These Phoenicians, originally passing by the waters, or along the 

 shores of the Euphrates, from the Persian gulf to the Mediterranean 



* Williams's edition of the Life and Actions of Alexander the Great, 



