HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



103 



SECT. III. 



From what part and how the inhabitants and animals 

 pajfed to America. 



THIS is the fecond and moft difficult point in the 

 problem of the population of America, on which, as on 

 others, authors are various in opinion. Some of them 

 attribute the population of the new world to certain 

 Phoenician merchants, who, in traverfing the ocean, land- 

 ed there by accident. Others imagine that the fame 

 people, whom they fuppofe to have paffed from the old 

 continent to the ifle Atlantida, from thence got eafily to 

 Florida, and from that great country gradually fcattered 

 themfelves over America. Others believe that they 

 paffed there from Afia, by the Straits of Anian; and 

 others, that they were tranfported there from the nor- 

 thern regions of Europe, over fome arm of the frozen 

 fea. 



Feijoo, a Spanifh Benedictine, thought a few years 

 ago to propofe to the v/orld a new fyftem; and what is 

 this new fyftem ? That America was united in the north 

 to the old continent, by which both men and animals 

 paffed there. But this opinion is as ancient as Acofta, 

 who, one hundred and forty-four years before Feijoo, 

 publiftied it in his Hiftory of America: befides, it is not 

 fufficient to folve all the difficulties refpecting the paffage 

 of animals, as we mall fee hereafter. 



The count de Buffon, notwithflanding his great geni- 

 us and pointed accuracy, contradicts himfelf openly in 

 this point. He fuppofes the two continents united by 

 oriental Tartary, and affirms that by it the firft inhabi- 

 tants 



