t 2 ) 



a way which had not as yet been marked out, and 

 in which they muft travel without a guide. But 

 what I am furprized at is, that thofe who have 

 gone deepeft into this affair, and who have had the 

 advantage of helps beyond all thofe who have gone 

 before them, fhould have been guilty of ftill greater 

 miftakes, which at the fame time they might eafily 

 have avoided, had they kept to a fmall number of 

 certain principles, which fome have eftablifhed with 

 fufficient judgment. The fimple and natural con- 

 fequences they ought to have drawn from them, 

 would have been, in my opinion, fufficient to fatisfy 

 and determine the curiofity of the publick, which 

 this unfeafonable and erroneous difplay of erudition 

 throws back into it3 original uncertainty. This is 

 what I flatter myfelf I fhall be able to make ap- 

 pear, by that fmall portion of thefe conjectures 

 which 1 am now going to relate. 



Thofe of our hemifphere were, no doubt, much 

 furprized, when they were told of the difcovery of 

 a new world in the other, where they imagined no- 

 thing was to be feen, but an immenfe and danger- 

 ous ocean. Notwithftanding, fcarce had Chrifto- 

 pher Columbus found out fome iflands, and amongft 

 others that of Hifpaniola, in which he difcovered 

 gold mines, but he was prefently of opinion, fome- 

 tirnes that this was the Ophir of Solomon, and at 

 others the Zipangri, or the Cipango of Mark Pol 

 the Venetian. Vatablus and Robert Stephens were 

 likewife perruaded,' that it was to America that So- 

 lomon fent fleets- in queft of gold, and Columbus 

 thought he faw the remains of his furnaces in the 

 mines of Cibas, by much the fined and richeft of 

 the ifiand of Hifpaniola, and perhaps of all the 

 new world. 



Arius 



