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each of them fpoke a language peculiar to them- 

 felves. From other authorities we learn, that the 

 Mexicans thernfelves came from California, or from 

 New Mexico, and that they performed their journey 

 at leafl for the moft part by land ; confequently, they 

 could not have come from Norway. 



Grotius having thus fet out with an evident ana- 

 chronifm, every thing he has built on that foun- 

 dation is a coniequence of that original error ; and 

 his antagonifc, who, with all the liberty of a Fle- 

 ming, imagined he had a right to confider him 

 only as a man of letters, whofe fyftem appeared 

 to him erroneous ; and offended at the fame time, 

 becaufe having attacked him with fufficient mode- 

 ration, he had not met with the polite return he 

 expected, fails not to purfue him through all his 

 blunders, and to place them continually before his 

 eyes. 



The learned embaffador imagined he had read in 

 Herrera^ that the iflanders of Baccalaos bore a per- 

 fect refemblance to the Laplanders. Laet, after 

 declaring he could meet with no fuch fact in the 

 Spanifh hiftorian, repeats what he had already faid, 

 that he does not deny but fome of the Americans 

 might have had their original from Europe \ then 

 bringing his adverfary back to Mexico, he afks 

 him what connection there was between the Mexi- 

 cans and the inhabitants of the if! and Baccalaos ? 

 He acknowledges afterwards, that Herrera mentions 

 a fort of baptifm and confefTion, that were p radii fed 

 in Yucatan and the neighbouring iflands \ but he 

 maintains, that the worfhip of thofe barbarians was 

 mixed with fo many impieties, and thofe fo plainly 

 idolatrous, that it could not reafonably be fuppofed 

 to be derived from the Abyflinian Chriftians. He 



adds. 



